Exploring Postmemory and Inherited Trauma: Narrative Duplicity in Post-Generational Literature

This paper examines Maus by Art Spiegelman and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, specifically addressing how these two authors develop themes of inherited trauma and postmemory in the text. There is a discussion of postmemorial theory as it applies to the literature, supplemented by the specific narrative strategies the authors employ in order to create duplicity of time and voice in the text. These two texts can be read as new postmodern ethnographies for their use of a narrator-mediator, which situate the works as key to the understanding of the post-generational position in America. As a conclusion, inherited trauma and the historical implications of such works of literature are explored in relation to one another, suggesting that in order to heal from historical and cultural trauma on both personal and national levels, the stories of the post-generation must be told both by members of the post-generation as well as by those who inherit the stories afterward.