Storytelling After Rupture: Julius Lester and the Reconstruction of Black Identity

الملخص

     This article examines how Julius Lester uses storytelling to confront the historical ruptures that shape Black identity. Through works such as From Slave Ship to Freedom Road, The Old African, To Be a Slave, and his rewriting of Othello, Lester returns to the question of how identity can be rebuilt after violence, displacement, and erasure. His works on slavery show how the Middle Passage, the forced Atlantic crossing endured by enslaved Africans, broke families and communities while also generating forms of memory and resistance that allowed people to endure. His version of Othello continues this work by giving the character a past, a name, and a sense of self that earlier interpretations denied him. By placing history and literature in relation, this study argues that Lester's writing restores depth to figures whose identities were reduced by colonial narratives. The article shows Black identity as something that is flexible not fixed, marked by trauma, carried through memory, and still able to grow. Overall, the study highlights how Lester's storytelling repairs what history tried to erase and opens space for new ways of imagining what identity can be.