Nathaniel Champion
Student
ENGL 1102-498
19 November 2017
Annotated Bibliography: Have we become numb to suffering & trauma?
Despite a recent increase in attention within the social sciences, suffering remains for the most part outside of the purview of sociologists and the public alike. Without sympathy for those who are suffering or going through trauma we allow ourselves to become numb to horror and tragedy.
Harvey, Daina Cheyenne. “A Quiet Suffering: Some Notes on the Sociology of Suffering.”
Sociological Forum, vol. 27, no. 2, 2012, pp. 527–534
Daina Harvey in this brief essay reiterates recent call in these pages to document those less well-marked forms of domination—both on the side of those who exercise power and those who experience it—and to move the conversation further along, use this opportunity, via some ethnographic insights from a year-long ethnography of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, to make some remarks on what a sociology of suffering might look like. They also note some of the causes of suffering in the Lower Ninth Ward in order to both familiarize the reader with what is going on there and in an attempt to denaturalize the suffering. After a field note and excerpts from a conversation with Lee, a resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, they show
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The autobiography lies at a crucial nexus in the drift of trauma in narrative, an era during which trauma ceases to adopt pre-historical forms and is officially assembled into terrorist weaponry. Trauma in A Month and a Day results from state terrorism—it is transparently political, and is thereby a link between the archetypes of trauma that precede it and the sub-state terrorism that comes in its wake. The essay concludes that SaroWiwa’s diary is a milestone on the route from personal trauma to the trauma of state terrorism in Nigerian
A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,
He does not provide statistics or matter-of-fact statements to present the outcomes of Katrina. Instead, Rose writes about what he himself experiences as a result of the storm. This author is not weaving together a tale of imaginary faces in an attempt to gain sympathy. He writes as himself experiencing instances of tragedy, camaraderie, and despondency. There is no logical format for what subject matter he may explore. In this anthology of articles he utilizes dark humor, such as when he writes of the stench and subsequent war of refrigerators; optimism, such as when he describes the characters that remain and the absoluteness of Mardi Gras; nostalgia, such as when he reflects upon memories with his children and his first visit to New Orleans; and dejection, such as instances when he himself begins to lose hope and realize the poor outlook for his
Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnography Gang Leader for a Day is a summary of his research through the University of Chicago in the 1990s. Venkatesh chose to do research on poor African-Americans in Chicago, and their experiences in public housing developments. He concentrated his study on the Robert Taylor Housing to better understand how residents lived and differentiated from those in other parts of the city. Venkatesh’s target population was those living in harsh living conditions, primarily black and poor. Throughout this paper, I will be addressing Venkatesh’s research and its limitations. I will also share my opinion on Venkatesh’s analysis and understanding of his findings about the residents, and how his experiences mesh with my own. In
A black slave from Barbados,Tituba, states that her “slave sense has warned her that, as always, trouble in this house eventually lands on her back” (8). As a black woman who lives in a never ending subordinate position, her instincts tell her to prepare herself so that once again she is not the
Despite its prevalence, suffering is always seen an intrusion, a personal attack on its victims. However, without its presence, there would never be anyway to differentiate between happiness and sadness, nor good and evil. It is encoded into the daily lives people lead, and cannot be avoided, much like the prophecies described in Antigone. Upon finding out that he’d murdered his father and married his mother,
This paper focuses on the Geraldine case (Dominguez, Tefera, Aronson, & NCTSN, 2012). Geraldine’s trauma occurred in the home when her father shot her mother. This paper will focus on my personal reactions to this case, how my reactions effect interactions with the people I am working with and finally self-care strategies. Personal reactions are the things that make us feel or act a certain way that others may or may not see, but we know that something has affected us these can be to good things and bad alike. I might react to winning the lottery by passing out, just the same I might get depressed if a close friend dies. These are reactions to the situations we are presented in life.
This book is giving details about what was hidden from the rest of the world, shielding us from the truth. At the Dark End of the Street describes the decades of degradation black women on the Montgomery city buses endured on their way to cook and clean for their white bosses. While sifting through court files and old trial transcripts, McGuire produced evidence that showed white on black rape was endemic in the segregated South. I felt like I had discovered a whole new civil rights movement with black women and their struggle for dignity, respect and bodily integrity at the center that is as poignant, painful and complicated as our own lives.
Since the beginning of our nation, victims have always existed, and the categories of victims and types of suffering have expanded greatly. At our creation, more obvious examples of victims stood out, such as the Native Americans who first inhabited this land. The colonists may even consider themselves victims to the Crown. As we move throughout our history we continue to see widely-known examples of people suffering, from the disgusting era of slavery to the horrific terrorist attacks on our country's soil at Pearl Harbor and on 9/11. However, it was the day-to-day victimization that had yet to be known or explored. This speaks to the crimes occurring every day in our nation that result in the short-term and long-term suffering of victims.
Trauma is a disturbing experience that causes deep stress and possible anxiety. Traumatic incidents are thought to involve victimization. Examples of traumatic events range from witness, physical attack, emotional or sexual child abuse, to the sudden death or disabling illness of a loved one. Traumatic events in particular, possibly leads to a multitude of symptoms, including depression, guilt and obsessive thought about the victimization experience. Trauma and the body can be perceived in a literary context in Junot Diaz’s, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Jean Rhys’s, Wide Sargasso Sea and Danticat’s, The Farming of Bones.
Taylor, Quintard. "Chapter 5." From Timbuktu to Katrina: Readings in African American History. Boston, Mass.: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008. N. pag. Print.
Moreover, although experiences vary, there are those which may be shared by African-Americans collectively. Using Trethewey’s Beyond Katrina as a primary example, one may find specific themes which are shared collectively by people of African descent, and those include the effect of the absence of the familial male, tragedy as a motivating force for African-Americans, and the history of America as told by the oppressor.
Trauma can be defined as something that repeats itself. In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, trauma recurs in soldiers for different reasons. However, although their reasons for trauma are different, the things they carried can symbolize all the emotions and pasts of these soldiers. One man may suffer trauma from looking through letters and photographs of an old lover, while another man could feel trauma just from memories of the past. The word “carried” is used repeatedly throughout The Things They Carried. Derived from the Latin word “quadrare,” meaning “suitable,” O’Brien uses the word “carried” not to simply state what the men were carrying, but to give us insight into each soldiers’ emotions and character, his past, and his present.
Wilson, W.J. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
As an African American woman, I have lived and worked in underserved communities and have experienced personally, the social and economic injustices grieved by underserved communities and the working poor. All of which, has increased my desires to work with such populations. A reserved person by nature, I have exposed an inner voice that I was oblivious to. I have expressed my inner voice to those living in underserved communities, who are seeking social and economic stability. I have come to classify and value the strength I have developed by the need, to survive in an underserved community. I use these as my continuous struggle against the social and economic injustices that I have experienced, as a product of an underserved community and as an African American woman. I have continued my struggle to overcome the barriers from my upbringing in an underserved community.
The characters of Olanna and Ugwu in Adiche’s Half of a Yellow Sun deal with the traumatic memories of the Biafran war in varying ways. The way each character copes with the trauma speaks to their character and illustrates the way they have understood culture through their personal experience of the Biafran war. Their ideologies that they were brought up with shape their experiences, clarifying their actions in dealing with traumatic experience. The interaction between these two characters, Olanna and Ugwu confront the ways in which one could deal with ‘burning’ memory and effects of the Biafran war. Their personal histories foreshadow the manner in which they attempt to move forward.