Trauma Narratives and Herstory

This book draws together international scholars to examine the representation of female trauma and women's version of history in contemporary literature and culture. Focusing on texts by or about women, the book explores the variety of representational strategies used to depict female traumatic experiences, and articulates the complex relation between trauma, gender and signification. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to trauma, the authors analyse a range of genres including fictional texts, autobiography, comics and film. Writers discussed include: Alice Walker, Eva Figes, Cristina Garcia, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Dorothy Allison, Diane Noomin and Maxine Hong Kingston, among others. Demonstrating a rich plurality of perspectives, the volume sheds light on the power of literature and art to enable minority subjects to come to terms with loss and trauma.

Sonya Andermahr is Reader in English at the University of Northampton, UK. She has written widely on contemporary British and American women's writing. Her publications include Jeanette Winterson (2009), Jeanette Winterson: A Contemporary Critical Guide (2007) and, with Terry Lovell and Carol Wolkowitz, A Glossary of Feminist Theory (2000). Her current research interest lies in female trauma narratives with a particular focus on narratives of maternal loss in contemporary women's writing. She has also co-edited (with Lawrence Phillips) Angela Carter: New Critical Readings (2012).

Silvia Pellicer-Ortin wrote her PhD thesis on the work of Eva Figes as a Research Fellow at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and is currently a member 'Contemporary Narrative in English', a research team at that university. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of Cambridge and Reading and has delivered many papers related to her main fields of research, Trauma and Holocaust Studies, British-Jewish writers, autobiography and feminism. She is the author of several articles dealing with these issues, and she has contributed, with Sonya Andermahr, to a special issue of the journal Critical Engagements, on the work of the writer Eva Figes.