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Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language QUOTES

Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language QUOTES

1 " There is no pleasure to be had in writing about trauma. It requires opening a wound, looking into the bloody gape of it, and cleaning it out, one word at a time. Only then might it be possible for that wound to heal. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

2 " To change the world, we need to face what has become of it. To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

3 " Sometimes suffering becomes more bearable when you can share the whole truth of it. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

4 " Trauma shapes all our lives, in so many ways. We are walking wounds, but I am not sure any of us know quite how to talk about it. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

5 " I wrote about my trauma because it was the only thing I could do. I did not yet know how to make myself be heard. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

6 " I realized that when writing about trauma, you have to be prepared to handle not only your own trauma but being exposed to the trauma of others. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

7 " I pretended to be anyone but myself, hoping I could lose myself in the virtual world. I wanted to lose myself because I was losing my mind. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

8 " Not all writing about trauma is created equal. As with most subjects, writers can be careless with trauma. They can be solipsistic. They can write concerned only with what they need to say and not with what an audience might need to hear. They assume that their trauma, in and of itself, is the only story they need to tell, or that having experienced trauma is inherently interesting. Or trauma serves as pornography - a way of titillating the reader, a lazy way of creating narrative tension, as if it is only through suffering that we have a story to tell. We see trauma as it unfolds but are rarely given a broader understanding of that trauma or its aftermath. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language

9 " But I would fall asleep next to someone who loved me, and would never leave me alone with old ghosts. "

― Roxane Gay , Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language