"In everyday speech, "community" signals intimate, authentic, and deeply egalitarian social relations. Since the 1960s, "community" also often implies political solidarity. Yet, repression and violence clearly operate within communities as well as between them. Does this mean that community is merely a delusion, or is it a worthwhile social and political goal?" "This study examines the ways in which Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, and Joy Kogawa imagine the possibilities and limitations of communities in novels of the 1980s and 1990s. Through their returns to past moments of severe social disruption, the works considered here explore the relations between trauma and oppression that inform many minority histories and contemporary realities, particularly those of a multicultural US and Canada."--BOOK JACKET.