Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged trauma

Thousand-Cricket Song

Thousand-Cricket Song is a compelling collection of poetry. My copy is smudged with fingerprints, creases, and other signs of wear from the use I've given it in only one month. I often read one poem at a time, and found myself needing time to consider new ideas or read up on history. The subject matter is heavy; poet Catherine Strisik spent time in Cambodia.

Song Over Quiet Lake

In Song Over Quiet Lake, Sarah Felix Burns tells several intertwining stories of loss, love, and healing. The novel centers on an unlikely friendship between a young white woman, Sylvia, and a Tlingit elder, Lydie Jim. Both are students at the University of British Columbia, and they meet when Sylvia is assigned to be Lydie’s tutor.

Arc and Hue

It is deeply satisfying to encounter poetry like Tara Betts’. The widely published poet, author, and Rutgers University creative writing professor bears witness to the true grit of life, including poverty and appearance-based assumptions and experiences that categorize one as other, even among an already marginalized population.

Invisible Sisters

The loss of a loved one can wreak havoc on the closest of families. There doesn’t seem to be a formula that can predict which families will survive a tragedy and which families will break apart as a result.

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth

In an episode of the television series Homicide: Life On The Street, detective John Munch muses on how to crack the case of a brutal murder. In his typically caustic, world-weary way he quips darkly about motive, “If it’s not one thing, it’s a mother.” Alice Miller would add “or the father” to that line.

To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed

Two a.m. When you are young, this is the time that bars close, new love springs unbidden in doorways, and entire dramas are played out in the time it takes a traffic light to change. When you are older, with marriage and children under your belt, it is the hour at which a ringing phone wakes you in terror, not annoyance; when a voice in the darkness signals illness, not invitation; when awakening in a strangely empty bed, one will know that something has gone awfully wrong with the person whose warmth still lingers in the covers.

Live Through This

In the late nineties, playwright, singer-songwriter, and spoken word artist Sabrina Chapadjiev was an impassioned student playwright in college when she experienced an intensely creative period that put her on the brink of self-destruction. She had recently learned that a young, fierce playwright she had long admired, Sarah Kane, had committed suicide, and she was worried.

Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction

Live Through This is truly a feminist work. It takes the expressed experiences from individuals coming from a wide array of backgrounds, who candidly and publicly share their experiences with issues labelled taboo and private, offering strength and conscience to readers everywhere. The format of this work is an anthology of pieces from some of the most groundbreaking American cultural producers.

Strange Piece of Paradise

When I picked up this memoir in early July, I was expecting to navigate a woman’s difficult journey from surviving a brutal, anonymous trauma into an enlightened state through making peace with the crime scene and its effected community. What I did not anticipate was the systemic analysis of social problems, personal depth and conscious processing that this book contains.

Support Zine

“How do you define consent? Have you ever talked about consent with your partner(s) or friends? Do you know people, or have you ever been with people who define consent differently than you do?” Thus begins one of the best zines I have ever read on the subject of healing from sexual abuse. This zine is specifically geared towards friends, lovers and allies of survivors, and is written in an accessible, loving, realistic way, including writing and comics by a dozen or so contributors who are healing from or supporting others with abuse histories (many have experienced both).
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