Using the frameworks of trauma and memory studies, this monograph analyses Zadie Smith's work to foreground postcolonial redefinitions of trauma that challenge universal methods of coping with suffering in global times.

Beatriz Pérez Zapata is Lecturer of English for Primary Education at the Valencian International University and Assistant Lecturer of English for Specific Purposes at Tecnocampus (Pompeu Frabra University). She obtained her PhD from the University of Zaragoza. She has published extensively on Smith's work in international journals. She has also published articles on the representation of shame and trauma of diasporic subjects, and postcolonial subjects and refugees in video games. Her research interests are trauma, black British writing, diasporic literature, and the representation of refugees in literature and media.

Introduction: Postcolonial Traumas: Theories and Narratives

Chapter 1. Origins, Original Trauma, and Transgenerational Trauma: The Obsessions and Revelations of History

Chapter 2. The Erasure of Origins against Original Trauma: The Ambivalences of Forgetting and Remembering in White Teeth, On Beauty, and NW

Chapter 3. Multiple Origins and Multidirectional Memory: Dialogic Histories of Slavery in The Embassy of Cambodia and Swing Time

Conclusion: The Forms, Complexities, and Contradictions of Postcolonial Trauma