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Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language
By Roxane Gay
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Start ReadingEditor's Note
Healing wisdom…
Trauma is a common thread for so many, from personal experience to the collective trauma of racism, climate change, and a global pandemic. Roxane Gay’s personal trauma has shaped her life and work, including her 2017 memoir about her own sexual assault, “Hunger.” In her new Scribd Original, “Writing into the Wound,” Gay unpacks the aftermath of “Hunger”, exploring the public reaction that reopened her wounds once more. The result is a skillful guide to sharing, processing, and healing from trauma through writing. “To change the world, we need to face what has become of it,” she writes. “To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.”
Description
“Roxane Gay seems to have a knack for fearlessly telling the truth.” —The New York Times
From the bestselling author of Hunger and Bad Feminist, an unforgettable, deeply personal look at how trauma has shaped her life and work—and what all of us need to do to come to grips with the collective suffering of the past year.
Bestselling author and cultural icon Roxane Gay is no stranger to trauma. As a young girl, she was the victim of a horrifying act of violence that changed her life and would strongly influence her career as a writer. In her 2017 memoir Hunger, she addressed that trauma head-on, writing with bracing honesty about her body and the ways that food can be used both to bury pain and make oneself disappear. The response to Hunger by some critics who seemed to take perverse pleasure in highlighting Gay’s vulnerabilities was itself a fresh wound. By exploring trauma publicly, Gay suffered more of it.
In her Scribd Original Writing into the Wound, Gay not only talks openly about trauma in her personal life—from her fraught time as an undergraduate at Yale to the stress of returning there as a visiting professor to the fallout from Hunger—but also about the collective trauma we’ve experienced this past year. COVID-19, racial and economic inequality, political strife, imminent environmental disaster, and more: Gay catalogs it all with her trademark candor and authority. To make sense of our pain, she suggests, we need to explore it fully, even as we’re still in the midst of it. Just as she writes her way through her own traumas and coaches her students to do the same, she urges us to take a long, hard look at the wounds we all share: “The world as we knew it has broken wide open. There is a before and an after, and the world will never again be what it once was. That sounds terrifying, but it is an opportunity.”
“To change the world, we need to face what has become of it,” she writes. “To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.” Full of wisdom and rage and grace, Writing into the Wound is a remarkable consideration of where we are, and where we need to go, by one of the finest authors and cultural critics of her generation.
Book Actions
Start ReadingBook Information
Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language
By Roxane Gay
Editor's Note
Healing wisdom…
Trauma is a common thread for so many, from personal experience to the collective trauma of racism, climate change, and a global pandemic. Roxane Gay’s personal trauma has shaped her life and work, including her 2017 memoir about her own sexual assault, “Hunger.” In her new Scribd Original, “Writing into the Wound,” Gay unpacks the aftermath of “Hunger”, exploring the public reaction that reopened her wounds once more. The result is a skillful guide to sharing, processing, and healing from trauma through writing. “To change the world, we need to face what has become of it,” she writes. “To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.”
Description
“Roxane Gay seems to have a knack for fearlessly telling the truth.” —The New York Times
From the bestselling author of Hunger and Bad Feminist, an unforgettable, deeply personal look at how trauma has shaped her life and work—and what all of us need to do to come to grips with the collective suffering of the past year.
Bestselling author and cultural icon Roxane Gay is no stranger to trauma. As a young girl, she was the victim of a horrifying act of violence that changed her life and would strongly influence her career as a writer. In her 2017 memoir Hunger, she addressed that trauma head-on, writing with bracing honesty about her body and the ways that food can be used both to bury pain and make oneself disappear. The response to Hunger by some critics who seemed to take perverse pleasure in highlighting Gay’s vulnerabilities was itself a fresh wound. By exploring trauma publicly, Gay suffered more of it.
In her Scribd Original Writing into the Wound, Gay not only talks openly about trauma in her personal life—from her fraught time as an undergraduate at Yale to the stress of returning there as a visiting professor to the fallout from Hunger—but also about the collective trauma we’ve experienced this past year. COVID-19, racial and economic inequality, political strife, imminent environmental disaster, and more: Gay catalogs it all with her trademark candor and authority. To make sense of our pain, she suggests, we need to explore it fully, even as we’re still in the midst of it. Just as she writes her way through her own traumas and coaches her students to do the same, she urges us to take a long, hard look at the wounds we all share: “The world as we knew it has broken wide open. There is a before and an after, and the world will never again be what it once was. That sounds terrifying, but it is an opportunity.”
“To change the world, we need to face what has become of it,” she writes. “To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.” Full of wisdom and rage and grace, Writing into the Wound is a remarkable consideration of where we are, and where we need to go, by one of the finest authors and cultural critics of her generation.
About the author
Reviews
Roxanne Gay, Writing into the Wound, Understanding Trauma, Scribd, 2/19/21
I'm grateful for Roxanne Gay's writing. The power, vulnerability and fluidity of her words reach my heart and inspire my mind. As a memoirist in development and a fellow “architect of their own vulnerability” I appreciate Gay’s framing of the importance of the audience, the reader and her guidance to be wary not to indulge in confession and assume trauma’s function only as “pornographic,” an “easy way to create narrative tension,” but to work to portray “flawed people who hurt and who were hurt,” and not just as victims and villains.
Reading this, I wished to be one of those fifteen chosen undergrads, but as a mom on the brink of her mid-century, I am super excited to put on my life-long student hat in her newly released MasterClass.
Rating: 5I'm grateful for Roxanne Gay's writing. The power, vulnerability and fluidity of her words reach my heart and inspire my mind. As a memoirist in development and a fellow “architect of their own vulnerability” I appreciate Gay’s framing of the importance of the audience, the reader and her guidance to be wary not to indulge in confession and assume trauma’s function only as “pornographic,” an “easy way to create narrative tension,” but to work to portray “flawed people who hurt and who were hurt,” and not just as victims and villains.
Reading this, I wished to be one of those fifteen chosen undergrads, but as a mom on the brink of her mid-century, I am super excited to put on my life-long student hat in her newly released MasterClass.
Another brilliant essay from Roxane Gay. I was riveted to every word.
Rating: 5If I have to name the dominant feeling inside me after reading this, it is gratitude. Dr. Gay is vulnerable and strong in a way that I don’t understand, but do admire. This read was perfectly timed, for me, personally. And I think it is also “timely” in the collective sense.
Don’t we all feel just a little too raw these days? Aren’t we all grasping at the straws of our once tidy lives? This piece says “yes, it is unraveling. It always was, and here’s how to find the loose thread and pull it gently and spool the yarn. Collect it and weave something new.” Thank you for showing me how.
Rating: 5Don’t we all feel just a little too raw these days? Aren’t we all grasping at the straws of our once tidy lives? This piece says “yes, it is unraveling. It always was, and here’s how to find the loose thread and pull it gently and spool the yarn. Collect it and weave something new.” Thank you for showing me how.
I wish I had a print copy of this. Roxane Gay, again, shows us why she is one of the greatest writers living today.
Rating: 5
Roxane Gay never ceases to amaze me. Her work is so important. Loved this essay and looking forward to the full book release!
Rating: 5You nailed it again! Your writing speaks on many levels and illuminates, educates, gives voice for many. Thank you!!!
Rating: 5