本书探讨了诺贝尔文学奖获得者非裔美国女作家托妮·莫里森小说中的创伤与身份建构主题。本书以此为主线，结合黑人音乐与书写对表达文化、精神创伤和治愈创伤、解放心灵的作用，试图分析小说中少数族裔特别是少数族裔女性是怎样在种族、性别、阶级多重枷锁下深受肉体和精神上的奴役而丧失自我、饱受身心创伤，又如何通过音乐和书写、爱和社区等途径寻找、建构身份。

Introduction
Chapter 1 Healing Trauma Through Music: Aesthetic Sensitivity and Cultural Conservation
1.1 Trauma and Black Musical Expression
1.2 Black Music as a Historic Process of Acculturation and Cultural Identification
1.3 Morrison's Music Aesthetics
Chapter 2 Morrison's Spirituals: Traumatic Loss of Identity
2.1 Cultural Trauma and the Loss of Cultural Identity
2.2 A Spiritual Home
Chapter 3 Morrison's Blues: Trauma and Traumatic Release o
3.1 Traumas and Turmoil in Blacks' Experiences
3.2 Release of Pains
Chapter 4 Morrison's Jazz: Constructing Identity Through Cultural Hybridity
4.1 Re-inheriting Black Cultural Heritage and Awakening Black Cultural Consciousness
4.2 Fusing African Culture and Western Culture: the Southern Past and the Northern Present
4.3 Creating Future Out of Shadows of History: New Cultural Identity and Traumatized Black Identity
4.4 Participating in Communications and Bonds: Sisterhood, Community and Fraternity
4.5 Reconstructing Identity Through Transcending Given Names
Chapter 5 Trauma and the Identity Construction inA Mercy
5.1 Morrison's Black Female Consciousness
5.2 Black Feminist Literary Criticism
5.3 Loss of Identity Under Intersecting Oppressions of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class
5.4 Quest for Identity
5.5 Reconstruction of Identity
5.6 A Voice for All the Marginal Group
Chapter 6 Childhood Trauma and Its Recovery in God Help the Child
6.1 Introduction to God Help the Child
6.2 Triple Roots of Childhood Trauma and the Symptoms
6.3 Narration: An Effective Way to Recover from Childhood Trauma
6.4 Trauma in Common
Conclusion
Bibliography