Unclaimed Experiences: Identity and Trauma in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl and Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death

Abstract

Trauma, shaped by experience, alters a person's identity, especially how they perceive and position themselves in contemporary society. The interconnection between identity and trauma explains how traumatic experiences such as displacement, discrimination and violence define an individual. This paper examines how traumatic experiences shape the protagonists' identities in Helen Oyeyemi's Icarus Girl and Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death. The novels show how trauma leads to conflicting identities while opening doors for human growth through the experiences of the protagonists. The study's theoretical basis for analyzing the novels is Cathy Caruth's trauma theory. According to Caruth's idea of belatedness, trauma is experienced belatedly and its repercussions manifest long after the traumatic event as survivors make sense of initially inexplicable events. It concludes that although trauma upends a person's identity, it can also strengthen resilience, resulting in self-discovery and the creation of a fresh sense of self. The degree of this change is contingent upon how traumatic events are perceived by the individual and the community in which they take place.