Ashes of Remembrance: Reconfiguring the Phoenix

Literature affords the possibility of diverse perspectives, inviting the reader to try a character or experience on for size and to consider ways in which culture affects the narrative. What it means to be a person and then to become an adult within one's own ancestral tradition is inherited directly, through being with others and also through the stories that are passed along from parent to child, through which one finds one's place in the social world. Whatever the conscious intention of the author, traumatic texts are uniquely colored by the heritage that gives rise to them. Traumatic tales offer us bits and fragments from dream and fantasy, present and past, through which the reader can begin to see how meanings coalesce and cohere around signs that become symbols as we gain greater facility in reading them. In this article, I consider three threads of traumatic tales and their similarities and differences, hoping that the reader will be able to recognize both commonalities and differences, ways in which richness and texture might be added to our lives if we can recognize consciously what otherwise might haunt us.