The Keloids We Heal

Trauma, Spirituality, and Black Modernity in Literature

Author: Sarah Soanirina Ohmer

Corporeal and spiritual healing in literature by women of colors

Cloth – $110

978-0-252-04645-2

Paper – $28

978-0-252-08854-4

eBook – $19.95

978-0-252-04776-3

Publication Date

Paperback: 05/13/2025

Series: Transformations: Womanist, Feminist, and Indigenous Studies

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About the Book

Corporeal and spiritual healing in literature by women of colors

The corporeal and spiritual healing in literature by women of colors can be seen to redefine modern thought and printed text. Sarah Soanirina Ohmer traces the impact of colonization and enslavement on Black women and Black women’s contributions to colonial, nineteenth, and twentieth century literature in the US, Brazil, and the Caribbean.

Drawing on intersectional analysis, Ohmer focuses on portrayals of trauma and spirituality in works by Toni Morrison, Conceição Evaristo, Maryse Condé, Gloria Anzaldúa, the Quilombhoje poets, and María de los Reyes Castillo. Ohmer compares literature from different countries along four thematic pathways: ghosts, mirrors, naming, and motherhood. Her analysis unlocks the literature’s power to heal through gut-wrenching descriptions of wounds and thrilling passages of hope and liberation. Throughout, Ohmer weaves in her life story as a Black woman as she reflects on how colonialism, racism, sexism, and capitalism have impacted her work, traumas, and faith journey.

About the Author

Sarah Soanirina Ohmer is an associate professor of Latin American studies and Africana studies at City University of New York Lehman College.

Reviews

“Few books examine literature by women of color across the hemisphere and across linguistic boundaries. Ohmer examines four motifs—ghosts, naming practices, mirrors, and motherhood—and brings them into conversation with each other. Her work reveals that they are but some of the strategies women of color employ to contest narratives of modernity that have erased them.
—Vanessa K. Valdés, author of Oshun’s Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas

"The author’s stated goal is to develop women of color’s politics of healing as it appears in literature, demonstrating literature’s potential to heal while undoing colonial trauma related to their bodies and literary works."--Choice Connect