3/31/2024 0 Comments Npr intergenerational traumaThe second phase is where the refugee is directly a victim of a traumatic experience such as detention, violence, torture, the disappearance of relatives, hardships during escape, or guilt. The first phase is where the refugee notices changes in their community due to social or political changes. Veer breaks down traumatization of refugees in three phases: “increasing political repression”, “major traumatic experiences”, and “exile”. His book is meant for those who do social work and it gives psychological insight into what mental health problems may plague the refugee. Guus van der Veer, a renowned expert in counselling trauma victims and refugees, has broken down the experiences of refugees in order to write his book Counselling and Therapy with Refugees and Victims of Trauma : Psychological Problems of Victims of War, Torture and Repression. In Thi’s father Bo’s case, he experienced terror since infantry. Thi Bui’s parents, as first generation refugees, experienced terror daily in their adult lives. Bui also built credibility because her memoir is directly tied to historical contexts such as the Vietnam war. He presents this to argue that this is an example of how autobiographies rely on emotions to build credibility which Bui does as she narrates the childhood of Thi (Chaney 3). Chaney’s Graphic Subjects, he describes the differentiation between the “narrator ‘I’” who is the author and the “narrated ‘I’” who is the visual character in the comic. However, in the introduction of Michael A. The complex timeline discredits reality in the memoir for some readers. Bui explains why her parents are the way they are (emotionally distant) and how that was the best they could do given their trauma. She does this throughout the entire comic: she switches from her parent’s experience to show how it affected her own childhood experience. Bui gives us insight into why her mother was distant by introducing her siblings through stories of their birth in Vietnam. She begins her memoir with the birth of her baby and her mother’s absence from her delivery. Thi Bui’s narrative strategy is non-linear. Bui retells parts of her family’s traumatic history in Vietnam in order to break the cycle and improve her relationship with her emotionally distant parents: “‘I might have been happy to just dwell in my trauma, but with a baby in hand, I was really concerned with not passing on that trauma myself, and so I needed to filter stuff out so I could pass on something cleaner’”(Yu). But, the symptoms of trauma are passed down to Thi and her siblings, resulting in a cycle known as intergenerational trauma. Their unresolved trauma from years of living in constant survival mode as refugees affect their relationship with their children in an attempt to protect them from their history. Bui’s parents endure several hardships such as the disappearance of relatives, loss of children, and living in a police state. In Thi Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, the reader follows the impacts of the Vietnamese war on her refugee family as they carry their emotional baggage to the United States. Some immigrants may have the choice to leave their home country, but refugees are simply trying to escape theirs. The refugee experience often gets oversimplified and is grouped into the American Dream trope. Daily, we hear rhetoric that antagonizes immigrants and new restrictions on who can come across the borders. In the United States, we live in a political climate where the plight of immigrants are shadowed by the cries of xenophobia. Thi evaluates her relationship with her parents (Bui 31)
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