Traumas Caused by Racism in Kashmeera Lokuge and Hyppe Salmi’s Novel Ilmatilaa

Abstract

The article examines Kashmeera Lokuge and Hyppe Salmi’s migration novel Ilmatilaa (Airspace 2021) as trauma fiction. I will examine the target text with the help of trauma studies in literature, racism studies and emotion studies. The subjects of my analysis are the racism-related traumas of the main character and first-person narrator of the novel Shehani, a young woman who moved to Finland from Sri Lanka as a teenager. I investigate her emotions caused by experiences of racism, and also pay attention to her other reactions to racism. I examine whether the novel has the typical thematic and linguistic features of trauma fiction. In the analysis of the depictions of racism, I use some concepts from sociological racism studies that describe different forms of the phenomenon. The emotions Shehani experiences, evoked by racism against her, will be scrutinised with the help of emotion studies. I approach the emotions as being formed in interaction with, and as linked to, social injustice, and as and functioning as adaptive tools. In Lokuge’s and Salmi’s novel, detailed depiction of the racism experienced by the narrator, as well as her emotions in response to it, awaken the reader’s empathy and increase their understanding of the social phenomena of racism and being a migrant.