On Finding Home: Fractures and Dislocations In Memory Through War, Rebirth, and the Ghostly in Trauma

Abstract

This essay critically examines memory and trauma through my experiences in war and motherhood. I consider violence in war stories and the role of memory and imagination in my work. I question what is possible in finding home and making a life when the past cannot be erased and yet has been forgotten. Within this past, I wonder about grace within what is absent as well as within creation and destruction. This essay creates testimony on the importance of craft as my path to question both what my past means to me now as a new mother and about how my past might create meaning beyond my personal experience? This paper discusses works such as Venus In Two Acts by Saidiya Hartman, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, Home by Toni Morrison, and other works related to war, memory, and the speculative. This paper discusses Korean American identity and generational trauma through Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho, The Magical Language Of Others by E.J Koh, and other works.