Unfinished processes: Acting out trauma and working through postmemory

Abstract

This thesis expands on the concepts of trauma and postmemory portrayed in the graphic memoirs Maus by Art Spiegelman and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. Both memoirs constitute an intimately evocative family story, suspended on the unyielding frame of history, the way the intricately patterned webs of a dreamcatcher are suspended on its solid outer hoop. Unlike the good dreams sliding down the webs and feathers of a dreamcatcher, only the nightmarish trauma slides down the blood-stained frame of history. The enduring effects of trauma on the survivors of war and their children link the past and the present. Survivors of trauma deal with the lifelong effects of their traumatic experiences, leading them to act out their trauma. When the survivors’ traumatic memories are passed down to their children in the form of postmemories, the second generation attempt to work through their postmemories. Spiegelman and Bui, second generation writers and cartoonists, reconstruct their parents’ memories and present devastating historical events in the postmodern space of graphic memoirs to work through their postmemories and understand their lives shaped by memories that are not their own. This thesis includes textual and visual analysis of both graphic memoirs to understand the effects of trauma on the survivor generation, the transmission of traumatic memories from the survivors to their children, and the effects of postmemory on the second generation.