Weaving a Traumatic Web : Trauma in the fiction of Sherman Alexie and Leslie Marmon Silko .

1. Weaving a Traumatic Web: Trauma in the fiction of Sherman Alexie and Leslie Marmon Silko.

2. Literary Trauma Studies Is Trauma Fiction a paradox? (Whitehead 3) “Eurocentric Blind Spots of trauma theory” (Craps and Buelens 10) Trauma studies focuses on the Holocaust. “the danger of revictimisation” (Van Styvendale 206)

3. Trauma Personal Trauma Cultural Trauma Historical Trauma (HT) + Historical Trauma Response (HTR) DoriLaub- “the trauma of the holocaust is inherited by the children of the holocaust survivors” (qtd. in Van Styvendale 219) “present-day symptomatology” (Duran, Duran & Braveheart 61)

4. Psyche and History • Traumatic past carried forward to the present. • “We’re carrying a pain that is 400 years old.” –Alanis Obomsawin • “PTSD happens around an event, an event with a beginning and end. For Native people, the trauma continues. There hasn’t been an end” (White Hat qtd. in Wesley-Esquimaux and Smolewski 55).

5. Historical Trauma and Identity Protagonist simultaneously conveys personal and collective trauma. Protagonist magnifies a historical event experienced by a collective such as slavery, violence, war, etc.

6. Silko’sCeremony (1977) Tayo functions as a cultural figure. Native American genocide  WWII “Tayo’s traumatic web is intermingled with the web of life, the web of human history.” (Croisy 89) Personal + Historical Trauma  Identity

7. Alexie’sIndian Killer John Smith recreates the scene of his birth. Revisits trauma of adoption/kidnapping. Tenet: Trauma cannot be known/ represented directly. “trauma can only be known or represented indirectly through narrativization.” (Van Styvendale 217)

8. Alexie’sIndian Killer Alexie says in Tomson Highway interview that John Smith goes mad throughout the course of the book. Schizophrenia  Metaphor Rage related to trauma “The United States is a colony and I’m always going to write like one who is colonized, and that’s with a lot of anger” (“Seeing Red” par. 15).

9. Trauma Studies • Colonial Trauma is “a collective experience” (Craps and Buelens 4) • LaCapra, Erikson and HutcheonUnproblematic • Llyod, Saunders and Aghaie  Reductive and politically irresponsible

10. Conclusion • Trauma Theory  Colonial Trauma • Narrative techniques and innovations: • Landscape imagery  pathetic fallacy • Nonlinear plot • Disruption in temporal sequence Difficulty in representation and associated confusion.

11. Works Cited/Consulted Alexie, Sherman. Indian Killer. New York: Grove P, 1996. Print. ---. “Seeing Red.” Interview with Gretchen Giles. Sonoma Independent 3-9 Oct. 1996. Web. 17 Feb. 2011. Alexander, Jeffrey C et al. Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity. Berkley: U of California P, 2004. Print. Brown, Laura S. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 100-12. Print. Bhabha, Homi. "DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Nation State." The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print. Caruth, Cathy. Interview with Aimee L. Pozorski. Connecticut Review 28.1 (2006): 77-84. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.

12. Works Cited/Consulted ---. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. Print. ---. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Ed. Cathy Caruth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995. 3-12. Print. Christie, Stuart. “Renaissance Man: The Tribal “Schizophrenic” in Sherman Alexie’sIndian Killer.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 25.4 (2001): 1-19. Wilson Web. Web. 10 March 2011. Craps, Stef, and GertBuelens. “Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels.” Studies in the Novel 40.1&2 (2008): 1-12. Project Muse. Web 05 March 2011.

13. Works Cited/Consulted Croisy, Sophie. “Reimagining Healing after Trauma: Leslie Marmon Silko and Judith Butler Writing the War of Culutres.” Nebula 3.2-3 (2006): 86-113. Web 15 Feb. 2011. Duran, Bonnie, Eduardo Duran and Marie Yellow Horse Brave Heart. “Native Americans and the Trauma of History.” Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects. Ed. Russell Thornton. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1998. Print. Farrell, Kirby. Post-Traumatic Culture: Inquiry and Interpretation in the Nineties. Maryland: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998. Gilmore, Darren. “Contemporary Trends in Trauma and Literary Theory.” Academia 2.0. 12 Sept. 2010. Web. 15 March 2011.

14. Works Cited/Consulted Laub, Dori. “Bearing Witness, or the Vicissitudes of Listening.” Testimony: Crisis of Winessing in Literature. Ed. ShoshanaFelman and DoriLaub. New York: Routledge, 1992. 57-74. Smelser, Neil J. “Psychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma.” Alexander 31-60. Print. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1977. Van Styvendale, Nancy. “The Trans/Historicity of Trauma in Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash and Sherman Alexie’sIndian Killer.” Studies in the Novel40.1/2 (2008): 203-223. EBSCO. Web 02 March 2011.

15. Works Cited/Consulted Wesley-Esquimaux, Cynthia, and Magdalena Smolewski. Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing. Ottawa, ON: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004. Print. Whitehead, Anne. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004. Print.