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    Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language
    Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language
    Writing into the Wound: Understanding trauma, truth, and language
    Ebook39 pages34 minutes

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

    By Roxane Gay

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    “Roxane Gay seems to have a knack for fearlessly telling the truth.” —The New York Times

    From the bestselling author of Hunger and Bad Feminist, an unforgettable, deeply personal look at how trauma has shaped her life and work—and what all of us need to do to come to grips with the collective suffering of the past year.

    Bestselling author and cultural icon Roxane Gay is no stranger to trauma. As a young girl, she was the victim of a horrifying act of violence that changed her life and would strongly influence her career as a writer. In her 2017 memoir Hunger, she addressed that trauma head-on, writing with bracing honesty about her body and the ways that food can be used both to bury pain and make oneself disappear. The response to Hunger by some critics who seemed to take perverse pleasure in highlighting Gay’s vulnerabilities was itself a fresh wound. By exploring trauma publicly, Gay suffered more of it.

    In her Scribd Original Writing into the Wound, Gay not only talks openly about trauma in her personal life—from her fraught time as an undergraduate at Yale to the stress of returning there as a visiting professor to the fallout from Hunger—but also about the collective trauma we’ve experienced this past year. COVID-19, racial and economic inequality, political strife, imminent environmental disaster, and more: Gay catalogs it all with her trademark candor and authority. To make sense of our pain, she suggests, we need to explore it fully, even as we’re still in the midst of it. Just as she writes her way through her own traumas and coaches her students to do the same, she urges us to take a long, hard look at the wounds we all share: “The world as we knew it has broken wide open. There is a before and an after, and the world will never again be what it once was. That sounds terrifying, but it is an opportunity.”

    “To change the world, we need to face what has become of it,” she writes. “To heal from a trauma, we need to understand the extent of it.” Full of wisdom and rage and grace, Writing into the Wound is a remarkable consideration of where we are, and where we need to go, by one of the finest authors and cultural critics of her generation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEverand Originals
    Release dateFeb 11, 2021
    ISBN9781094400020
    Author

    Roxane Gay

    Roxane Gay is the author of several bestselling books, including Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the essay collection Bad Feminist, the novel An Untamed State, the short story collections Difficult Women and Ayiti, and the graphic novel The Sacrifice of Darkness. She is also the author of World of Wakanda, for Marvel, and the editor of Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture and The Selected Works of Audre Lorde. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and has just launched the Audacious Book Club and a newsletter, The Audacity.

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    Reviews for Writing into the Wound

    4/5

    358 ratings28 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I was expecting something else about the book. Did't love it BUT I did love her writing, her book recommendations and I became intrigued about her life, so, I will check other titles of this writer.
    • 5/5
      Short, compelling, and exactly what I needed to move forward with my memoir!

      Highlights include:

      -Expected and unexpected, positive and negative consequences of writing and publishing her memoir, Hunger (which I also highly recommend reading);

      -Reading list of exemplary novels and memoirs that demonstrate different ways of writing about different kinds of trauma and doing it well;

      -Author's compelling narrative style, sense of humor, and ability to make sense of the incomprehensible

      Favorite quote:

      "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." -Roxanne Gay
      (On "writing into the wound")
    • 4/5
      In this stand-alone essay, author Roxane Gay addresses a subject she knows intimately: the complexities of writing about personal and collective trauma. It's not that Gay particularly likes trauma as a subject; she is quick to point out that a description of a traumatic event without context is not enough for the development of a satisfying narrative. She then discusses some traumas she's experienced. For example, she discloses how she was re-traumatized by the reception to her very personal book, Hunger, as well as how COVID, the Trump administration, and police brutality have caused collective injury, especially to vulnerable black and brown people. Gay's return to Yale to teach an undergraduate seminar on trauma-informed writing is also highlighted. An interesting article, but it probably could have waited for inclusion in a book.
    • 3/5
      Short, not wildly enlightening. Mainly about one class she taught and making a book out of it.
    • 4/5
      It was a terrifying and aesthetic story I loved it..
    • 5/5
      As a writer of trauma, I was excited to discover this, and devoured it in one sitting. I appreciate everything she writes on this topic, and Writing into the Wound is no exception. Thank you for this, I only wish it was longer! The world needs to better understand trauma, to read about it, to inspire writers to dare to write about it, around it, and deeply into it. Writing in the Wound can help.
    • 5/5
      Stunning! Thank you for sharing...truly! I found this si breathtakingly truthful and heart opening.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't know if it would be a 'how to write into the wound' book or not. It wasn't quite that. When she talks about the fallout of 'Hunger' it opened my mind to the idea that sometimes telling the whole story is at the cost of your own well-being. We always hear that telling the sordid details is cathartic. My takeaway is that it might not be. Sometimes too much isn't freeing---it's just...too much.
      This is my first experience with Ms. Gay's writing. I really appreciated how frank she was about recent current events ie. the pandemic, George Floyd, Trump's failures etc. I found myself nodding a lot and agreeing.
    • 5/5
      Roxanne Gay, Writing into the Wound, Understanding Trauma, Scribd, 2/19/21

      I'm grateful for Roxanne Gay's writing. The power, vulnerability and fluidity of her words reach my heart and inspire my mind. As a memoirist in development and a fellow “architect of their own vulnerability” I appreciate Gay’s framing of the importance of the audience, the reader and her guidance to be wary not to indulge in confession and assume trauma’s function only as “pornographic,” an “easy way to create narrative tension,” but to work to portray “flawed people who hurt and who were hurt,” and not just as victims and villains.

      Reading this, I wished to be one of those fifteen chosen undergrads, but as a mom on the brink of her mid-century, I am super excited to put on my life-long student hat in her newly released MasterClass.
    • 5/5
      Another brilliant essay from Roxane Gay. I was riveted to every word.
    • 5/5
      If I have to name the dominant feeling inside me after reading this, it is gratitude. Dr. Gay is vulnerable and strong in a way that I don’t understand, but do admire. This read was perfectly timed, for me, personally. And I think it is also “timely” in the collective sense.
      Don’t we all feel just a little too raw these days? Aren’t we all grasping at the straws of our once tidy lives? This piece says “yes, it is unraveling. It always was, and here’s how to find the loose thread and pull it gently and spool the yarn. Collect it and weave something new.” Thank you for showing me how.
    • 5/5
      I wish I had a print copy of this. Roxane Gay, again, shows us why she is one of the greatest writers living today.
    • 5/5
      Roxane Gay never ceases to amaze me. Her work is so important. Loved this essay and looking forward to the full book release!
    • 5/5
      You nailed it again! Your writing speaks on many levels and illuminates, educates, gives voice for many. Thank you!!!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Learned so many word and empowered me to learn more how to overcome hardship
    • 5/5
      Wow but I would not write about my life because it would just make me feel sad
    • 2/5
      Is writing in to the wound explains about the medical issues or not ?
    • 5/5
      I think, overall, this is one of the best and most exciting shorter reads. Gay brings up many useful points to consider (related to the overlap between writing and trauma). Finished reading wanting more.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Its ah very nice this books end tha sucsis for tha Reviews
    • 5/5
      I was oddly enough deeply comforted by this book , the words don't hide the truth being spoken. This book is not hiding behind anything, if you take everything personally and are offended easily , take this book as an exercise for personal growth and to recognize that you too can say "I too possess toxic traits I still need to work on and dismantle " . Anyway I loved this.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The book is so motivate by teach a lot of things think you
    • 5/5
      What makes this greatest, it has relayed to true story that we can learn more from what we think It’s not possible but through power and hardships we can sure of what you want to do in life
    • 5/5
      It was so educated, i've learnt so many new words from it. I really enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      I didn't know I needed to read this until I started reading it. She writes about the importance of a writer leaving space for both themselves and the reader and that is exactly what she did. I found parts of myself while reading her words. I hope I can one day write as powerfully as Roxane Gay does.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5


      Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017), and Writing into the Wound: Understanding Trauma, Truth and Language (2021)
      .
      Roxane Gay
      .
      What is helpful to hoarders and children of hoarders?
      In preparation to write this review of Hunger which I read in 2017, I listened to Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman on Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast – the first hour a quite lovely recount of their love story. This is no sidebar: where Hunger illustrates the loneliness and longing of being fat, this conversation is a celebration, a blossoming. The woman who was scolded because “I didn’t wash dishes correctly… /Don’t get water on the floor/,” (H, pg.226) now bakes elaborate cakes for her loved ones. So much quality of life and self care is stigmatised through fatphobia and the policing of fat bodies.
      .
      Gay’s essay Writing into the Wound addresses the phenomenology of writing the trauma at the core of Hunger and the retraumatising incurred when this book went out into the world. It is not so much readers fumbling with their responses that hurts Gay here, but the “professional” journalists who fail, the feast or famine of respect and dignity.
      .
      Where do hoarders and CoH fall through the cracks?
      Writing into the Wound explores an ethics of writing – and reading – trauma.
      .
      “How do we convey the realities of trauma and its aftermath without being exploitative? How do we write trauma without traumatizing the reader? How do we write trauma without re-traumatizing ourselves when we write from personal experience? How do we write trauma without cannibalizing ourselves? How do we write about the traumatic experiences of others without transgressing their boundaries or privacy?” (WITW, pg.19)
      .
      People who are fat, and who have hoarding behaviours – with “unruly bodies and unruly appetites” (H. pg.9) - very rarely hold autonomy of our narratives.
      .
      Is it anticapitalist?
      Yes. Gay contextualises our experiences – personal and collective traumas - as the consequences of overarching capitalism, white supremacy and patriarchy. “We are opening our eyes to the grotesque inequalities that arise from a handful of people hoarding the majority of the world’s wealth.” (WITW, pg.37) 
      .
      @ minimum_2_ on IG

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I'm beginning - again - to write my memoir. Reading "Writing into the Wound" has inspired and given me several real tools to add to my writing toolbox. Thank you Ms. Gay.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The story is compelling. Good job writer! If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top or joye@novelstar.top
    • 4/5
      Great story; I love how it was given. Good job writer! If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to hardy@novelstar.top

    Book preview

    Writing into the Wound - Roxane Gay

    IN THE SUMMER OF 1994, I was a rising junior at Yale University. I had already changed my major twice. I began as a premed student, because I had an elaborate fantasy about becoming an emergency room doctor, fast on my feet, saving lives, engaging in torrid affairs with my fellow doctors, sex in on-call rooms, living a grand life. And then I took introductory biology with a professor who told the hundreds of eager students sitting before him that his class was designed to separate the biology dilettantes from the students who had the potential to become doctors. As the semester progressed, I was slow to make sense of the course material and quick to understand that I was one of the dilettantes he was so eager to dissuade from the medical profession.

    At the beginning of my sophomore year, I decided I would be an architect. My father is a civil engineer, so I hoped that an understanding of structures was part of my genetic inheritance. I loved my architecture classes. I loved building models and imagining what structures could be. In an urban planning class, I learned about how a city is designed and the importance of green space. In the studio, late at night, I would cut cork sheets with my X-Acto knife, and sometimes my hands. I had good ideas, but I struggled with physics, the laws of gravity, and designing structures that could realistically exist.

    I worked part-time in a computer lab in the cross-campus underground library. I loved technical theater and spent an inordinate amount of time on drama productions, designing and building sets, running soundboards, doing whatever needed to be done to make a show come alive from behind the scenes. Finally, at the end of my sophomore year, I settled on English. I loved reading and I loved writing, so surely studying reading and writing would be a natural fit. I moved with a roommate into an apartment off-campus above a small grocery store. I monopolized the phone line and used a modem to navigate the early internet, which is to say I spent a lot of time talking to strange men about sex. 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. I was breaking beneath the pressure of trying to be the good daughter and the perfect student when I was so desperately far from perfect. I was carrying a secret and using food to fill an ever-expanding void inside myself. And then, a few weeks before the semester began, I disappeared.

    In the ensuing years, my life has changed radically, and so has the world. As I write this, we are in the midst of an intense and seemingly unceasing collective trauma. Donald Trump’s reign as president and the grandest disgrace in American history is just behind us. The world has been ravaged by a pandemic that is particularly out of control in the United States. We have a new president, but a record number of people are going hungry as unemployment rises, along with the number of families falling into

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