Trauma, Memory, and Healing in Asian Literature and Culture

Is trauma a concept that can be translated across cultures? Can it have global applicability and utility for literary and cultural analysis? Do the approaches and perspectives generated by literary and cultural work hold purchase for social and political interventions?

Modern Asia is a region in which the traumatic legacies of colonialism persist and military regimes and dictatorships have led to untold human suffering. Countless loss of life has been caused by revolution, civil war, and genocide; and natural catastrophe has rendered existing social and political tensions even more volatile. The insights of trauma theory for the analysis of literary and cultural representation in Asia and the enrichment of trauma studies by the study of Asian literatures are two crucial areas of scholarly research. This book broadens the scope of trauma and memory studies by considering whether existing concepts of trauma and memory are viable in relation to the histories, present states, and futures of the non-Western world.

Explore the complex and surprising intersections of literature, history, and ethics across the region through its wide-ranging but closely comparative focus on geo-political sites across East, South, and Southeast Asia which brings together perspectives on both dominant and marginalized sites in the broad Asian continent, including Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Turkey.

Sharanya Jayawickrama is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature in the Department of English Language and Literature at Hong Kong Shue Yan University.