Ethical Representations of Trauma in Young Adult Literature

How can trauma be represented ethically in young adult (YA) literature? This dissertation examines a variety of YA novels that explore the diverse traumas of the Holocaust, postcolonial displacement, and parental abuse, with a focus on the literary techniques used to represent trauma and how these techniques reflect a broader trauma theory. This dissertation also explores the evolution of trauma theory and the resulting shifts in YA literature, showing how literary strategies used to represent trauma in the 1990s are now being subverted or questioned in contemporary trauma theory and metafictional literary representations. Traditional traumatic realism seeks to create empathic unsettlement through a reproduction of the traumatic experience, while emerging traumatic metafiction asks us to remain open to new ways of representing trauma—often that of an ignored or marginalised group—outside of the accepted trauma canon. In the realm of YA literature, where the strict rules of children’s and adult literature do not apply, the resulting narrative styles and literary techniques are particularly fascinating as they attempt to speak to a young adult reader.

The study of Holocaust literature in relation to trauma theory is already an established field; indeed, many cite Holocaust literature as the paradigm of trauma writing. Although this dissertation does examine traditional 1990s YA Holocaust literature, it also explores the unique ways contemporary YA authors writing about the Holocaust decades after the historical event are beginning to do so in order to reflect new ideas about the representation of trauma. Recent YA Holocaust novels may incite consideration of perpetrator trauma and intergenerational memory, or begin to question prescribed literary techniques and the assumed irrepresentability of Holocaust trauma.

A second historical trauma often appearing in YA literature is postcolonial displacement, although many recent theorists believe that trauma theory in its traditional form is not adequate to address the complex issues of postcolonial texts. Created in response to mainly Western traumas such as the Holocaust, traditional trauma theory is event-based and individual, and often ignores the insidious, cultural traumas of non-Western groups. In an effort to break free from the prescribed “trauma aesthetic” and contribute towards a decolonisation of trauma theory, this dissertation reflects a turn from the trauma writing strategies that work to great effect in Holocaust literature to metafictional and alternative methods such as self-reflexive allegory and appropriation that may be used by contemporary postcolonial trauma authors.

The third chapter of this dissertation focuses on literature including parental abuse, a common yet seldom studied theme in YA literature. Like postcolonial displacement, this insidious form of trauma calls for a non-event-based theory and method of representation. Here I chart a shift from the traumatic realism strategies often used in the trauma writing of the 1990s to current traumatic metafiction techniques. These new methods do not render the former methods obsolete, but do ask a reader to critically re-evaluate accepted representations of family abuse trauma, such as through a fairy tale framework or the consistent trope of repression, as our understanding of traumatic experience and memory evolves.