Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma

Usually I don't read and write at the level at which this book is written. How trauma is passed on is certainly a very complicated subject, and the author shows that she works at that level of complication, But the book uses far too many references, and at times seemes to be more of a node that links other references together, to the point where you can't really finish reading the book unless you have read at least part of the references on which the book is based, so it becomes a slow read and a somewhat circular process. After a while the writing style is more of ongoing drone into minutiae. I bought the book as part of some research for a fiction book that I'm writing, so the content has some value for me.

This is a remarkable text, recommended for anyone interested in psychological trauma and its recovery. Using examples from literature, film, and history, Gabriele Schwab has written a book that will resonate with a broad readership. Written in a style that blends a scholar's voice with more personal dialogue, there is something for everyone in this book. A triumphant accomplishment!

This is not an easy book for the layperson, but for anyone interested in transgenerational and communal legacies of trauma, it's one of the best books I have come across. Schwab writes from the position of being one of the generation of Germans born under the shadow of the war, and she writes about the embedded emotional silence in Germany during the decades following. She herself moved to the USA in order to find out how to speak of this experience. You need to allow yourself time to read and digest this book, but it is well worthwhile.

The book is one of the most sensitive and thought proving analysis of transgene rational trauma in its political and psychoanalytic sense. Written in an analytic and partly memoir form, it demonstrate the methodology of political in personal narratives. The most brilliant part of the book is that it engages with French theory without any jargon or complicated terminology. The lucid treatment of the sensitive topic is the biggest strength of the book.

Read it as a novel about a person trying to understand its past and its identity. Read it as a theoretical dissertation on historical trauma, memory and cryptography. Read it as a critical analysis about trauma, foreclosed memories and violence in art. Choose whichever you want, this book has it all. Schwab's Haunting Legacies might be a new classic on memory and historical trauma studies.

After several Herculean attempts to read this book with its consistently convoluted sentences obliterating every shred of sense that the writer's obtuse meanderings may have had at the outset, I have declared this 'work' an affront to intelligence. The subject matter also appears to have been about WRITING! (Ha ha ha!) rather than trauma. If you ever want to know what losing one's mind feels like, try reading this incomprehensible tangle of one very messed up mind!