Cette auteure explore les répercussions intergénérationnelles de la guerre, du génocide et de la violence, mêlant récits personnels, recherches approfondies et entretiens. Son œuvre examine la relation complexe entre le traumatisme et la mémoire, analysant comment les conséquences du passé façonnent notre présent et notre avenir. À travers sa prose et sa poésie, elle éclaire les subtilités de l'expérience humaine et sa résonance persistante à travers le temps. Son écriture élargit les conversations sur la manière d'affronter l'histoire pour transformer l'avenir.
Composed over a period of some twenty years, GRAVITY is Rosner's profoundly searching account of her experience as the daughter of Holocaust survivors. In an extraordinarily powerful mix of poetry and prose, Rosner traces the earliest remembered resonances of her parents' past and her dawning awareness of the war history that colored her family home during her youth in Schenectady, New York. She recounts her false starts in raising the subject with her father (a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp), his piecemeal revelations, and their eventual travels together to the sites of the nightmare in Germany. And she evokes, courageously and heart-wrenchingly, her own search for identity against the gravitational pull of her parents' experience and the traditional upbringing they've given her. GRAVITY reminds us that three-quarters of a century is a blink of an eye, that history happens at home, and that the past is something we all embody, knowingly or not.
Praise for Survivor Café A Best Book of 2017 (San Francisco Chronicle) A
Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award A Most Notable Nonfiction by Bay
Area Authors Selection (East Bay Times) Rosner's memoir, which combines moving
personal narrative with illuminating research into the impact of mass trauma
on a personal and cultural scale, is imbued with urgency, sincerity,
heartache, and heart. -San Francisco Chronicle, 1 of 100 Best Books of 2017
Mixing the personal with the historical and the literary with the scholarly,
Rosner achieves a breathtaking overview of events as varied as the Holocaust,
the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, and Japanese American internment. Her
impressive, highly readable Survivor Café takes on important issues of
atrocity, trauma, and memory, rendering them all with such great clarity and
intimacy that the reader will not soon forget them, or this powerful book.
-Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer This is a
personal exploration for Rosner, but also an exploration of the commonalities
found in the children of survivors. -Read it Forward Survivor Café is an
exercise in mapmaking, in identifying convergent paths in apparently disparate
legacies left by the world's humanitarian disasters . . . [Rosner] asks us to
look inside ourselves, to learn from the past, to forgive, and to understand
the deep connections binding us to our past, our future, and to all other
things. -Lilith Magazine Survivor Café is a beautifully expressed personal
examination of how trauma is passed down through generations...An exquisite
read. -The Daily Gazette In deep fissures and dark alleys having to do with
multigenerational trauma, anti-Semitism, racism, terrorism, torture, death and
loss, Berkeley writer Elizabeth Rosner uncovers, improbably, hope and
connection. -The Mercury News There's been a slew of research examining the
genetic effects of psychological trauma, but author Elizabeth Rosner is among
the first to take a deep dive into the personal implications of such
inheritance with her stunning new book, Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma
and the Labyrinth of Memory. -Orange County Register Deeply moving.
-Berkeleyside Rosner's writing is crafted like the poet she is, and her
ability to meld and transcend her own story with those of survivors of wars,
slavery, and genocide is nothing less than brilliant and more importantly,
healing. -ACEs Connection Rosner demonstrates a rare blend of scholarly
assessment and personal revelation, tempering her singular passion with an
encompassing mercy. In this important and vital contribution to the
conversation about legacy and responsibility, Rosner distills the magnitude of
such burdens and defines the scope of memorialization with an elegance and
eloquence that reverberates with both depth and nuance. -Booklist (starred
review) A thoughtful, probing meditation on the fragility of memory and the
indelible inheritance of pain. -Kirkus Reviews Novelist Rosner (Electric City)
shines an unblinking light on the most horrific of 20th-century crimes and
asks: What is the intergenerational legacy of trauma? . . . She considers art,
anniversaries, memorials, and psychotherapy, but the most powerful technique
she finds for dealing with trauma is simply telling the story behind it . . .
Themes of memory, language, and the bodily imprint of trauma are powerful, as
are Rosner's accounts of revisiting Buchenwald with her father . . . Rosner's
conclusions-that powerful suffering must be communicated before healing can
occur and that the most profound of human atrocities must be acknowledged so
that their like does not happen again-open the door to understanding and,
optimistically, show a path to peace. -Publishers Weekly This is the book that
clinicians and patients alike have been waiting for. Rosner seamlessly
integrates the latest research on intergenerational trauma with her own de
Set in Upstate New York, the narrative explores the significant transformation of a town into "Electric City" following Thomas Edison's establishment of his Machine Works in 1887. The story delves into the intersection of innovation and industry, highlighting the region's pivotal role in the emergence of modern science and manufacturing during the late 19th century. The scenic confluence of the Hudson River and Mohawk River serves as a backdrop for this historical account of technological advancement and community evolution.
The book features a reader's guide that enhances the reading experience, providing insights and discussion questions. Additionally, an interview with the author offers a deeper understanding of their creative process and inspirations behind the story. This combination enriches the reader's engagement with the text and encourages thoughtful reflection on its themes and characters.
Exploring the intersection of personal experience and academic research, the author delves into the transformative power of listening for fostering empathy and social change. Drawing from her background as the child of Holocaust survivors and her multilingual upbringing, she weaves together narratives and insights from fields like psychotherapy and neurolinguistics. This examination reveals how the sounds and silences in our interactions shape our relationships and understanding of the world.
