Oranges and Sunshine: The Story of a Traumatic Encounter

Publisher： MDPI

E-ISSN： 2076-0787|4|4|714-725

ISSN： 2076-0787

Source： Humanities, Vol.4, Iss.4, 2015-10, pp. : 714-725

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Abstract

This paper will rely on some well-known theories on trauma, memory and ethics to study how Jim Loach’s debut film Oranges and Sunshine (2010) testifies to the traumatic deportation of up to 150,000 British children to distant parts of the Empire, mainly Australia, until 1970. Oranges and Sunshine was based on Margaret Humphreys’ moving memoir, originally entitled Empty Cradles (1994) but later re-titled Oranges and Sunshine after Loach’s film. What these two texts basically claim is the need to recover historic memory through heart-breaking acts of remembrance, which can alone denounce the atrocities that were concomitant with the colonial enterprise and pave the way for disclosing and working through individual and collective traumas.