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Watching: 7 novels about the reverberations of trauma
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I n my novel, Eden, two sisters survive a childhood abduction, the aftermath of which sets their lives on very different courses. We find out what happened big them when they were kidnapped as teenagers, but more integral is what happened to them afterwards. How vì you return to your everyday life after experiencing a violent, traumatic event? Is your life forever changed? Are you still the same person? Do you try big forget what happened, or vì you try to big integrate it?
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There is a traditional narrative about trauma in books and films: after much torment or self-destructive sad behavior, a protagonist finds relief by telling their story in a moment of emotional catharsis, hopefully in a therapist’s office or in a safe space with a supportive, trusted friover. While this is tremendously healing and empowering, what we often don’t see is that healing is an ongoing practice. There is still an “after” after the therapy session, after the meeting, after the purge of tears. We still have sad big go trang chính, wherever that is, if trang chủ truly exists in the “after,” if it ever existed big begin with. And often we have to rebuildit.
Each of these novels is a complex meditation on trauma, many of them addressing the subject through structure as well as story. These books explore how survivors process & communicate their pain and how oftentimes their stories go unheard by others, or are conveniently forgotten. But trauma is persistent; it is embedded in the circuits of our lives and in the power structures of our society. It exists everywhere and it does not degrade simply because we prefer not big see it. As in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, it lives on in the atmosphere, in the soil, in the cities, in the water. And whether we are the perpetrators or the victims, the beneficiaries or the sufferers, the willfully blind or the ones who see very real ghosts, the historical continuously infects the intimate. In order to bear witness, we must first open oureyes.
Beloved by ToniMorrison
Toni Morrison’s masterpiece on the ongoing brutalities of slavery mixes realism & the supernatural in a novel inspired by the true story of an escaped slave who kills her child rather than have sad her returned big the plantation. In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Sethe & her family are haunted by a ghost and later by a mysterious young woman who arrives on their doorstep calling herself, Beloved. Lyrical, difficult, seductive, cruel, Beloved is the eternal return of history, of what we thought we left behind fordead.
The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch
Fractured, scattershot, compulsive, agitated, The Small Backs of Children refuses big follow any one path and calls everything into big question. A photographer takes a picture of a girl who escapes an explosion in a war-torn country. A writer is re-traumatized by this phobig. A group of artists decides to find this girl. A girl is already found, already an artist. One person escapes brutality, another person is aroused by brutality, another person profits from brutality, another needs brutality big make art. Where vị these motives comes from? How are they connected? Lidia Yuknavitch tightly intertwines sex and violence and gender & art & war, showing how these elements are written on the body toàn thân. The book’s discursiveness demands your attention & shakes you out of your anesthesia.
An Untamed State by RoxaneGay
The first half of Roxane Gay’s debut novel is hard big stomach: an unrelenting depiction of a woman kidnapped, raped, & held for ransom. Mireille is held for 13 days while visiting family in Haiti because her wealthy father refuses to big pay up. But in the second half of the novel, when Mireille returns big her life & walks through American suburbia as a stranger in a strange land, the story shimmers with intersecting layers of identity. There are no easy answers in Gay’s novel, there is no happily ever after because no one emerges unscathed. We don’t expect forgiveness and the characters don’t give sad it. Gay focuses her lens on more complex questions: Who are the people that commit these crimes and who are the people we become if wesurvive?
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
“Anything can happen to big Anyone,” thinks Estha as he stirs jam in his family’s factory. “It’s best to big be prepared.” An amalgam of memories, relatives, politics, and storylines this Booker Award-winning novel follows fraternal twins Estha and Rahel through the incidents of their childhood that caused Estha big be “Returned” to big his father. Fearing that the Orangedrink Lemondrink movie theater molester will come after hyên, Estha and Rahel build a boat to big escape, leading big a horrible accident. Their divorced mother is locked in her room for having an affair with an untouchable-caste man, & the twins are separated for years until Estha is “Re-Returned.” Roy’s disorienting timeline is a kaleidoscope of wanderings and anguish, reflecting the magical realism that is childhood, with its strict social structures, its very real dark forces, & its promises oflove sad.
The Year of the Beasts by Cecil Castellucci, illustrated by NatePowell
This hybrid YA novel/graphic novel is moody, strange, & tormented. Alternating chapters of prose and comics, this story is a watery, inky portrait at the nexus of truth & myth. Did something truly horrible happen big Tessa, or did she read it in a book? Are you a regular teenager or bởi vì you have sad magical powers? And what if you don’t want the power you have? The Year of the Beasts explores how the fantastical offers a place for Tessa to make sense of a summer tragedy. It will melt whatever has turned you tostone.
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Mysterious Skin By ScottHeim
Two young boys are sexually abused by their little league coach: one can’t remember the episode, & the other can’t forget it. Brian finds himself in the crawl space of his house late at night and, unable to account for his previous whereabouts, believes he was abducted by a UFO. Neil falls for the affection & attention of the coach & confuses it with love sad. As the two boys move sad on from high school, Neil becomes a hustler and Brian continues big be obsessed with aliens, his dreams, and his missing memory. This novel, which was made into big a film by Gregg Araki, delves into the complexities of desire & youth, compliđô thị and guilt, how we cling big what happened or the fantasy that itdidn’t.
Mrs. Dalloway By VirginiaWoolf
“Nothing has really happened until it has been described,” Woolf once told her biographer. Mrs. Dalloway unspools its story as the title character, Clarissa Dalloway, prepares big throw a party, and Septimus Smith, a WWI veteran suffering from post-traumatic áp lực disorder, struggles with the memory of losing his frikết thúc in battle. The stream-of-consciousness style flows between characters & baông chồng and forth in time: Clarissa revisiting her youth & lost chances for love sad, Septimus held captive sad by hallucinations. They exist in separate worlds until Septimus’ suicide is mentioned at Clarissa’s buổi tiệc ngọt. The way in which Woolf tells this story — sometimes confused, sometimes resting for a moment, sometimes delighted, often tormented — mirrors her characters in their plight big wake themselves up.
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Andrea Kleine is a novedanh mục, performance artist, & essayist. Author of the novels CALF (a PW Best Fiction Book of 2015) & EDEN (HMH, 2018). www.andreakleine.com
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