Trauma in langston Hughes’s Mulatto

Abstract EN

Langston Hughes‘s Mulatto is a play that deals with the social life of the African Americans on a Southern plantation in Georgia.

The racial attitudes of the Southern white society are the main reason behind traumatizing the central characters in the play.

Recent studies demonstrate that racism meets the criteria for trauma.

This study will examine the play through the lens of Literary Trauma Theory.

This theory is appeared in the middle of 1990s, henceforth it has been developed by so many scholars, and the latest revision is made by Joshua Pederson in 2014.

By applying the latest version of trauma theory this study shows how slavery, its aftermath or its legacy affected and haunted African Americans, and created trauma or historical trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for the African Americans.