"TRAUMA AND LITERARY HEALING: STORIES OF SURVIVAL AND RENEWAL"

Abstract

The theme of trauma has become the main issue of modern-day literary conversations, which indicates the psychological, social, and cultural disruptions people and communities have gone through. Literature is not only a trauma, but it is a place of healing, reconstruction and renewal. The paper explores the role of literary narratives as transformational places where the narrators owe all their pain to, rearranging it in meaning-making and reconstructing their identities. Based on the trauma theory and narrative psychology, the paper addresses the idea that survivors survive through narrative as a way of symbolically recovering and transforming into individuals. The discussion demonstrates the silenced nature of literature, its ability to provide a voice to silenced experiences, social remembrance, and creates resilience. Through the analysis of the narratives describing personal and communal trauma, this paper will claim that literary storytelling can be both a witness and a solution, changing the meaning of suffering and its disillusionment into wholeness.