Migration and absence-induced trauma in Toni Kan’s Songs of Absence and Despair

This article investigates the representation of traumatic memory triggered by migration and loneliness in Toni Kan’s Songs of Absence and Despair, showing the manifestations of psychological and physical effects of postcolonial migration on mothers, children, and migrant fathers. The study draws on the tenets of Caruth’s Trauma Theory and Craps’ Postcolonial Trauma, to examine the ensuing traumatic effects of postcolonial migration on displaced families in Kan’s poetry. The analysis of the poems reveals traumatic episodes that are induced by migration, and it highlights the interplay of absence, loneliness, and trauma. The recreation of migrant experiences in the poems underscores postcolonial realities, especially socioeconomic struggles and familial connections that impact migration, and its resultant trauma. Kan’s Songs of Absence and Despair constitutes a poetic archive of trauma shaped by the emotional and economic implications of exile and absence. The article situates Kan’s poetry within a broader framework of global Black diasporic poetry that explores the traumatic outcomes of migration like the works of Saeed Jones, Grace Nichols, and Warsan Shire. The study contributes to postcolonial literary discourse by illuminating the entanglement of personal loss and historical displacement in contemporary African and diasporic poetics.