Haunted Presence: Trauma, Memory, and Spectral Testimonies in Easterine Kire’s A Terrible Matriarchy

In A Terrible Matriarchy, Easterine Kire takes us on an evocative journey of the Angami community’s struggle to heal in the traumatic mid-20th century Nagaland. This paper examines the novel through the lens of trauma studies, focusing on how intergenerational trauma, silence, and memory shape the lived experiences of the Naga people. The novel exposes the embedded trauma of political conflict, gendered violence, and historical silencing in family structures and communal life. Fascinating to the portrayal of the trauma in the novel is the presence of ghosts and spirits. By giving us realistic portrayals of the spirits of the dead that inhabit the quiet hills and valleys of Nagaland, Kire establishes that ghosts are more than literary anthropomorphism or theoretical metaphor but rather serve as culturally meaningful mechanisms of witnessing and healing. The paper argues that the text through the portrayal of ghosts and spirits functions both as a testimony to collective suffering and as a literary site for recuperative memory and emotional reconstitution.