Meike's Reviews > Trauma Plot: A Life

Jamie Hood was raped three times within two years, one incident a gang rape committed by five men, and in this experimental memoir, she ponders how trauma can be talked about and dealt with. An important starting point is Parul Sehgal's essay "The Case Against the Trauma Plot", in which Sehgal argues that if narratives let trauma trump everything else, "the trauma plot flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority" - but as the subtitle of her memoir shows, Hood argues that the trauma of sexual violence is not a plot point in the first place, it's pervasive. Rape culture is nothing new, the text for instance refers to Philomela from Metamorphoses who was raped and violently silenced. If anything, Hood will not be silenced.

The book is structured in four parts (plus an introduction that discusses the ultimate trauma plot novel, A Little Life): "She" is set in October 2012 and plays on Mrs. Dalloway, introducing grad student Jamie H. who is haunted by the specter (hence traumatic memory) of her rapist, the Diplomat. "I", told in the first-person, takes place in February 2013, and contextualizes the second rape, which involves drugs, with other kinds of violence. In "You", the "I" and the title-giving "You" are in conversation, giving new depths to the themes of alienation, dissociation, and shame related to sexual violence, while presenting diary entries that involve various kinds of self-harm and suicidal ideation. Finally, "We" shows the survivor working with a therapist.

The genius is that the memoir elaborates on one person's, the author's, experience, but the aesthetic choices allow her to still show multiple perspectives, to form a mosaic pondering the individual repercussions as they interact with the societal climate. The trauma plot discussion is one about representation per se and justice through representation in particular, for instance regarding who constitutes an acceptable victim. Sure, what Hood does is confessional writing, but it's formally daring and also doesn't shy away from describing rape in such gruesome detail that it made me think of the infamous tunnel scene in "Irréversible".

I admit that lately, I've been wondering whether the whole autofiction / confessional / memoir trend hasn't been overdone and thus exhausted, but books like this show that of course, it's not about genre, it's about how well it is done, about the creative potential and narrative ability of the author. And Jamie Hood is fantastic.