TRAUMA BOND AND BLACK WOMEN IN (BLONDE) WIGS: A STUDY OF SELECTED POEMS BY UNA MARSON, OKOT P’BITEK AND DOROTHEA SMARTT

Abstract

In postcolonial literature, the concept of a trauma bond serves as a powerful psychological and narcissistic allegory for the complex, deeply dysfunctional relationship between the postcolonial subject and the lingering structures of colonial power.  This work, which explores the hair dialogue between Una Marson, Okot p’Bitek, and Dorothea Smartt, forms an intergenerational critique of how imperialism tries to influence the black body. By contrasting Western hair aesthetics with Black hair aesthetics, these writers expose hair styling as a deeply cultural act. Through their poems, we can track a profound trajectory from trauma bonding to Western aesthetics and then to the politics of ancestral reclamation of the African pride. Grounded in the theory of deconstruction, identity is not static; it evolves according to the spaces in which the black woman occupies. In the poems under study, it is sadly ironic that by defying stereotypes the black woman who is trauma bonded to western ideologies mimics Western ideals which do not quite conform to traditional African settings. This becomes problematic because preference is given to narcissistic white supremacist ideals of beauty and culture and there is a breakdown of black traditional feminine aesthetics.  The hypothesis postulates that using the metaphor of (blonde) wigs on black women, the natural and authentic becomes “primitive” thereby; subjecting black aesthetics to a binary position of powerlessness conformed to pre-existing patterns of stereotypes. Black women lose ideals and quintessence of their identity when they fail to divorce themselves from cultural practices that do not conform to black ideals of aesthetics.