History as living memory and silenced histories in Gayl Jones’s The Healing

Name of Author : Vinisha Rose.P.B, Dr. S. Sureshkumar

Abstract: The Healing by Gayl Jones questions accepted notions of history as a fixed, written record. Rather, the book depicts history as a living memory that is influenced by the body, storytelling, and individual experience. Jones redefines history as something felt, remembered, and communicated rather than documented and archived by recovering narratives that have been suppressed, especially those of Black women, through the life story of Harlan Jane Eagleton. Gayl Jones reinterprets history in The Healing as living memory as opposed to written truth. The book reclaims Black women's history that have been suppressed and turns memory into a kind of historical truth through the story of Harlan Jane Eagleton. Jones crafts a potent alternative history that demands recollection as an act of survival, identity creation, and healing by emphasizing voice, body, and experience.

Keywords : living memory, historical truth, identity creation, survival

DOI :