Worlds of Hurt

Worlds of Hurt presents a coherent rendering of the relationships between individual trauma and cultural interpretation, using as its focus the Holocaust, the Vietnam war, and the phenomenon of sexual violence against women. Survivors of these traumas constitute themselves as unique communities and bear witness to their traumatic experiences both privately and publicly. The survivors themselves write a ‘literature of trauma’ - born of the need to tell and retell the story of the traumatic experience, to make it ‘real’ to the victim, the community, and to the larger public. In so doing, they draw on their understanding of previous traumas and other survivor communities, using them both as validation and cathartic vehicle for the traumatised author. When traumatic stories are told and retold, they enter the vocabulary of the larger culture and become tools for the construction of national and cultural myths.

• Will generate a great deal of interest across a broad range: holocaust studies, women’s studies, and people interested in Vietnam • Brings together issues which have usually been treated separately

Acknowledgements; 1. Worlds of hurt: reading the literature of trauma; 2. A form of witness: the Holocaust and North American memory; 3. Between the lines: reading the Vietnam war; 4. The farmer of dreams: the writings of W. D. Ehrhart; 5. There was no plot, and I discovered it by mistake: trauma, community and the revisionary process; 6. We didn’t know what would happen: opening the discourse on sexual abuse; 7. This is about power on every level: three incest survivor narratives; This is not a conclusion; Notes; Index.