a purpose, come from a specific point of view, and contain selected information, while leaving other information out. Narrative is fundamental to composing through trauma because it relies on specific events represented in imagery created with words, as well as actual images, such as photos, paintings, or videos (explored in the following section). Guy Allen (2000) summarizes why narratives are key to composing through trauma:
Stories, Buford writes, “protect us from chaos, and maybe that’s what we, unblinkered at the end of the twentieth century, find ourselves craving.” Buford goes on: “Implicit in the extraordinary revival of storytelling is the possibility that we need stories—that they are a fundamental unit of knowledge, the foundation of memory, essential to the way we make sense of our lives. . . . We have returned to narratives—in many fields of knowledge—because it is impossible to live without them” (279).
Rebecca Dierking puts it this way:
Siegel (2007, 308), looking at narrative from a neurological standpoint, found that narrative is not just a story, not just a distilled memory, but “a deep, bodily and emotional process of sorting through the muck in which we’ve been stuck” (2012, 50).
As crucial as narratives are for sorting through trauma, they can also help us to spin our wheels in the same old sludge. The savior, chronology, is also the culprit here. We think and live according to the iron clockworks of sequence. Chronological order forms deep lines in our psyches, and breaking this pattern can be hard. Chronology can meld us to the same ways of thinking about a trauma. Because traumatic memories are so strong and so rooted in time sequence, creating a narrative in a non-chronological order can help extract us from this rut. For this reason, much of the writing in my course does not depend on time. I suggest that students use flashback and flash-forward—and never begin at the beginning. Of course, within these blocks of discourse, narrative still prevails, but the primary chain is broken and new perspectives of making meaning often arise.
Another form or structure Jake uses is less visible to most readers, but is very common to writing about trauma. Different researchers (e.g., Wilma Bucci 2002 and Louise DeSalvo 1999) have identified this rough pattern in writing about trauma: (1) sensory detail; (2) linking these details to the event, which provoked these details; (3) blending these details and events into a narrative; and (4) analyzing and/or reflecting on the details and events. Writers do not set out to follow this form; it’s just that this rough shape is commonly found in such writing, after the fact.
Jake’s piece begins with a few intriguing sensory details: an owl circles above his head; an unknown voice sarcastically mimics him; he speaks with a young couple whom he recalls is dead. From there, he moves to the event itself—his struggle to wake up and orient himself, find his glasses, fumble through the pages of a Bible, and read a passage. He briefly analyzes why he is writing; it gives him a “modicum of comfort.” He continues to reflect briefly in the final paragraph. Like any writing process or product, there’s often a lot of recycling of elements. For instance, sensory detail often occurs throughout the piece, as it does in Jake’s writing. In all, form and structure reside in Jake’s piece, but it flies under the radar, so that it cannot stunt or hijack his ideas, distracting him from his search to identify and understand his trauma. At many stages of composing through trauma, we don’t need any kind of form or structure or recipe to follow—just a willingness to get it out, to create.
Forms and structures can be helpful but are not needed as we work to demystify a trauma. However, once we have generated an abundance of material that we have thoroughly developed, probed, questioned, offered possible answers to, analyzed relevant secondary sources and integrated them into our own thinking, casted them into different genres, and all other ways of perceiving them from multiple perspectives, then a structure can further help us gain distance and perspective on our issues.
Chih-Ning Chang is an intelligent, hard-working language expert who chose a demanding form to express her trauma, after she had thoroughly processed it in many different ways. Following is her poem, which she later converts to a video:
I am defeated
And I refuse to believe that
I can make a difference
I know it is hard but
“Dreams come true”
Is a joke and
“Nobody can change the fate”
So I told people
I don’t trust myself
My life is broken because
The monster
Is more powerful than
My strength
The monster stole my identity and hope
I would be lying to you if I said
I will have a great future ahead
Before everything I must know
Failures are inevitable
Why is it?
Shame and insecurity are so ingrained in me
I don’t think
My life will be filled with joy and the sense of great achievement
My self
Is controlled by
The fear
There is no way to turn things around
It is foolish to presume
I will succeed
If only I could reverse the perception, my life would be different.
(Course Document 2008)
Chih-Ning, whose second language is English, wrote this poem in response to the “Monster and Angel” prompt, in which writers wrote a poem or a letter to their monster or trauma and then literally deconstructed the monster and re-assembled it into an angel. Chih-Ning chose to do this as a palindrome, which makes sense read from top to bottom, as well as from bottom to top. In her video, the poem appears in white font on a black background as she reads it aloud to soft, tinkling piano music. The monster version reads from top to bottom, scrolling downward, to emphasize the trauma. The poem’s final line signals the opposite meaning: that the positive quality of the angel, is about to begin. Next, the same poem appears on a pink background, illustrated with a flower, as Chih-Ning reads it from bottom to top, the upward movement serving the positive message.
The palindrome is a demanding master. Chih-Ning was able to recast her trauma into this stringent form for a few different reasons. First, because she had completed and revised several projects focused on her trauma, she felt grounded and confident enough for this new challenge. She knew her message inside and out and was prepared to compose it in a different way, for a wider audience. Second, like other international students who had been educated in school systems that rarely or never allowed students to experiment or “play,” Chih-Ning vigorously seized the chance to do so as a graduate student. She had just encountered the palindrome form on a YouTube video and had to try it out for herself.
In this context, the “tight” structure of the palindrome was perfect. It extended or further distanced Chih-Ning from her original trauma, which consisted of arriving in America from her native Taiwan without
