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

283 reviews for:

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

I picked this up because Hunger was one of my favourite non-fiction reads of last year (and I currently have a free trial on Scribd lol), and this essay is a follow-up/reflection on that. I liked this - I did feel like I'd have liked to go a bit deeper into the topic since it is such a heavy one, but for a short essay, I thought Gay presented her points well. Since I came into this because of Hunger, I appreciated hearing about how writing/promoting the book opened up old wounds, but also helped her work through her trauma. I liked the discussion of what writers need to consider when writing about trauma, whether that be personal trauma or collective trauma, especially the point about finding a balance between the story that the writer needs to tell in order to heal, as well as telling a story that the audience needs to hear. I'm not a writer, but I definitely think this provides a good overview of things to think about when writing about trauma for any writer.

A couple of things I wanted to flag - while listing off and describing other works that she finds influential, Gay does use the term "Indian" to describe a First Nations woman. Though it is unclear whether or not this is language borrowed from the source text or not, I personally felt like she could have chosen to use different language, especially considering this essay focuses so heavily on traumatic language/writing. She also recommends Alice Walker in her list of reading, who is notoriously anti-Semitic, which could be a trigger for many people.

Overall, I think it's worth the read if you have access to Scribd and are a writer, but otherwise, I wouldn't say this is a must-read.

kiturak's review against another edition

4.0

reflective fast-paced

liz_art's review against another edition

5.0

emotional informative reflective fast-paced

kushtyliving's review against another edition

5.0

emotional informative inspiring fast-paced

livforreading's review against another edition

5.0

fast-paced

This is incredibly informative given that I’m currently enrolled in the class she speaks of in this. I listened to it twice!

ramonamead's review against another edition

4.0

I listened to the audiobook read by the author. I love Roxane's work and this was a compelling listen. As a writer myself, I was hoping I would learn techniques from this book. Instead it more of her commentary on writing about trauma from what she teaches on the subject. She did recommend several books she considers well written about trauma, so that's good to have. This is a very short audiobook so I plan to listen to it again soon for it to fully sink in.