From Colonial Rupture to Everyday Violence: Cultural Trauma In Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill and Temsula Ao’s Laburnum for My Head

Abstract

Literature is a reflection of human life, culture, and imagination expressed through language. It explores universal themes such as love, suffering, identity, power, trauma, and resistance. It allows the readers to understand both individual and collective histories. Through various genres and forms, literature not only entertains but also challenges social norms, preserves cultural memory, and deepens emotional and intellectual awareness.

Northeast Indian literature represents the rich cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of one of India’s most distinctive regions. It comprises eight states, namely Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim. The literature of the northeast emerges from a complex history shaped by indigenous traditions, colonial encounters, migration, and political movements. For a long time, northeast literature remained marginal within the larger framework of Indian English writing, but it has now gained critical recognition for its unique voices and perspectives.

Northeast literature is rooted deeply in oral traditions, myths, folktales, songs, and legends, which also reflect the lived experiences of tribal and non-tribal communities alike. Storytelling has traditionally functioned as a means of preserving collective memory, cultural values, and ancestral knowledge. The authors of this region draw oral narratives in their writings, thereby blending the past with the present and asserting cultural continuity in the face of rapid modernisation.