Trauma and the Migrant Archive: Reading The Last Gift Through Second-Generation Memory

Abstract

This paper reads Abdulrazak Gurnah's The Last Gift to unearth the intersection of migrants’ trauma, memory and identity. I explore migrants’ trauma in reconciling silenced histories with their present states in the quest for an identity. Abdulrazak Gurnah's migrant-centred narratives are built on struggles to break silence and (re)construct identities in exile, even if such an enterprise is fraught with the danger of traumatising the subject. I read the novel from the perspective of Hanna and Jamal, who are second-generation migrants, to examine how the manipulation of traumatic memory can aid one's understanding of their suppressed identity. Based on an acknowledgement that trauma is anti-narrative, I explore how migrants attempt to invoke honour to survive their traumatic histories. This reading exposes how the stifling of traumatic memory does not dissuade second-generation migrants, from understanding their identity. I conclude that Gurnah unearths the overarching nature of the trauma evoked by forced migrations on the one hand. On the other hand, The Last Gift juxtaposes immigrants’ muteness over their traumatic pasts with their generations’ belief in the reprieve in their parents’ memory and speech.