This presentation explores how the perpetual traumas and continuous subjugations of the African diasporic subjects emerge in conjunction with their present-day intersectional oppressions. This past-present reality exposes the limits of traditional memory and trauma theories which oftentimes assume a subject's traumatic singular Event is complete. By examining the novels The Farming of Bones (1998) by Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat and Song of the Water Saints (2002) by Dominican-American author Nelly Rosario this project underscores the intergenerational trauma from the Trujillo Regime. Along with contemporary layered systems of oppression these novels reimagine the continuity of memory for Black subjects from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and their diasporas. I use Michael Rothberg's widely cited concept of multidirectional memory as a starting point to break up the linear nature of traditional memory studies and explore varied avenues for memory constructions. Additionally, this project expands on Sadiya Hartman's concept in "The Time of Slavery" where the vestiges the slave trade and slavery remain for Black subjects in both material and epistemological ways. In engaging with studies by Rothberg, Hartman and others, this project attempts to provide a framework to better understand the intertwining class, gendered, racial, transnational, and political traumas experienced by the Dominican and Haitian diasporas. For African diaspora subjects, memory is constructed with their present and past realities simultaneously, disrupting the unidirectional approach to memory studies by constructing both a historical and intersectional articulation of Black memory.
