CARTOGRAPHIES OF TRAUMA AND DISPLACED IDENTITIES IN MARIE THERESE TOYI’S WEEP NOT, REFUGEE

This study explored the cartographies of trauma and displaced identities in Marie Therese Toyi‟s Weep Not, Refugee. The study specifically analysed on how the war traumas and identities of the displaced Burundians resulting from violent conflicts and civil wars in Burundi represented in the novel. In order to critically examine and analyses on how Marie Therese Toyi translates trauma and identities of the displaced Burundians across Great Lakes region, the study drew theoretical underpinnings from post-colonial theory. It particularly drew on Ruth Caruth‟s views of trauma studies in literature and Homi Bhabha‟s conceptions of hybridity, unhomeliness, liminality and uncanny to examine the cartographies of trauma and displaced characters liminal identities in the novel. The findings of the study affirm that Weep Not Refugee is about the memories of war, traumas and sufferings of the Burundian refugees in the camp in exile and later in Burundi. Of a particular importance to the findings of the study, the author carefully selects aesthetic aspects to provide readers with an opportunity to imagine the impacts of ethnic war between Hutus and Tutsis to the displaced Burundian community across the Great Lakes region. More importantly the author uses the novel to explore the significant contribution of displacement to delineate and circumscribe Burundian refugees with reduced identities and refugees‟ sense of unbelonginginess and unhomeliness in areas of displacemen