Property and Possession in Gayl Jones’s Novel Corregidora: A Study in African American Literature and Literary Theory

Abstract

the traumatic memory of their ancestors. The novel navigates sites of trauma, memory, and blues music while resisting the bourgeoisie-capitalist relationships that permeated not only white society but also African American communities. Jones’s novel presents the plight of an African American woman, Ursa, caught between the memory of her enslaved foremothers and her life in an emancipated world. The physical and spiritual exploitation of African American women who bear witness to the history of slavery in Corregidora materializes black women’s individuality. This article is framed by trauma studies as well as the Marxists’ concepts of commodification, accumulation, and production. Ursa, one of the Corregidora women, represents a commodified individual in her own community. However, in Ursa, Jones writes a blacks woman’s voice that undermines, interrupts, and destabilizes the patriarchal dynamic of America. Corregidora is a novel that forms from a black women’s perspective that refuses the enslavement of African American women’s bodies, hi/stories, and voices (both during and post-slavery).