The Trauma Mantras: A Memoir in Prose Poems

The Trauma Mantras is a memoir by medical anthropologist, teacher, and writer Adrie Kusserow, who has worked with refugees and humanitarian projects in Bhutan, Nepal, India, Uganda, South Sudan, and the United States. It is a memoir of witness and humility and, ultimately, a way to critique and gain a fresh perspective on Western approaches to the self, suffering, and healing. Kusserow interrogates the way American culture prizes a psychologized individualism, the supposed fragility of the self. In relentlessly questioning the Western tribe of individualism with a hunger to bust out of such narrow confines, she hints at the importance of widening the American self. As she delves into humanity's numerous social and political ills, she does not let herself off the hook, reflecting rigorously on her own position and commitments. Kusserow travels the world in these poetic meditations, exploring the desperate fictions that "East" and "West" still cling to about each other, the stories we tell about ourselves and obsessively weave from the dominant cultural meanings that surround us.

Author: Adrie Kusserow
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 01/09/2024
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.59lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.41d
ISBN13: 9781478025573
ISBN10: 1478025573
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | General
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs

About the Author
Adrie Kusserow is Professor of Anthropology at St. Michael's College and the author of Refuge, Hunting Down the Monk, and American Individualisms.

Yusef Komunyakaa is Professor of English at New York University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of numerous books of poetry.