In an exploration of how contemporary fiction narratives represnet trauma - that response to events so overwhelmingly intense that normal responses become impaired - Laurie Vickroy engages a wealth of the 20th century's most striking literature. Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and "Jazz", Marguerite Duras's "The Lover", Dorothy allison's "Bastard out of Carolina", Jamaica Kincaid's "The Autobiography of My Mother" and Larry Heinemann's "Paco's Story", among others, are the source of Vickroy's study investigating the complex relationships portrayed in trauma fiction and how those portrayals direct this difficult material to readers. Vickroy argues that contemporary trauma narrative's are indeed personalized responses to this century's emerging awareness of the catastrophic effects on the individual psyche of wars, poverty, colonization and domestic abuse. She examines these texts as post colonial attempts to rearticulate the lives and voices of marginalized people, to reject Western conceptions of the autonomous subject, and to recognize the complex negotiations of multicultural social relations.
Trauma is a compelling and evocative topic in the contemporary world and as reflected in its literature. In unravelling trauma's effets, the texts studied in "Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction" reveal the intricacies of power and the relationship between society's demands and the individual's psychological well-being.