Correcting the Past: Making Memory Serve

Abstract

Taking Gayle Jones’ Corregidora as a metaphor for the nature of the United States' relationship in the present day to its history of slavery, this thesis seeks to enter the existing discourse on continuing racial tension and disparity by establishing what role social “mythology” has in directing and informing efforts to resolve these sources of social strife. By considering the life trajectories of the Corregidora family, a lineage created in slavery and still ruled, in the middle of the 20th century, by its influence, this paper seeks to illustrate the ways in which memory and history of the multi-generational trauma of slavery can be either a hindrance or help in moving beyond them productively.