1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Colonization of Native Americans

Native Americans have suffered great losses after the colonization for instance; mental and physical problems, loss of culture, identity, land, and religious rituals. They have been subjugated for the past five centuries. During pre-contact with the white settlers, eighteen million Indigenous people were living in the American continent – in present time five million live in the USA. Therefore, colonization negatively affected the Natives in many different forms for example: economic, psychological, and spiritual aspects. Alcoholism and drug use in Natives’ community is one of the biggest issues they have been facing for many generations. When this type of trauma continues for many generations, it is called “generational trauma”. According to a study done by Russell Thornton titled Studying Native America: Problems and Prospects, he argues that trauma should be healed otherwise it will lead to more psychological problems e.g. depression, anxiety, etc. (1998, p. 62). When Native American authors write about their experiences and cultures – they mostly try to educate people about the brutal history of colonization. During the 1960s, Native Americans started many movements to encourage themselves to appreciate their identity and culture which was called “Red Power”. These movements were motivated by the Civil Rights Movement. The 1970s, was the era that Native literature bloomed later calling it “Native American Renaissance”. In the middle of the 20^th century, Native writers applied new approaches, at the same time, they did not abandon their oral storytelling traditions (Hollrah, 2004, p. 15).

1.2 Jewish Holocaust

In 1932, Adolf Hitler the leader of the anti-Semitic Nazi party was elected to lead Germany. During the twelve-year period of Hitler’s regime, six million Jews were murdered. The Nazis supposed that Germans were the superior race and Jews were corrupting their communities. The root of this belief comes from the hatred and prejudice toward the Jews. In result of these anti-Semitic views, Jews were isolated in death camps, murdered in gas chambers, and their dead bodies were burned. They were oppressed in many different ways; their property and possessions were taken away from them (Totten, 2006, p. 120). Nazi Germany called this “The Final Solution” – it included ending the Jew race at any cost: “From 1933 until 1939, the Nazi government enacted hundreds of increasingly restrictive and discriminatory laws and decrees that banned Jews from all aspects of German public life” (USC Sohoa Foundation, n.d). The concentration camp was named “Auschwitz” in which Jews became slaves and were forced to do labor until they no longer could. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum defines Holocaust as the: “systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning ‘sacrifice by fire’” (as cited in USC Sohoa Foundation, n.d). The Jews were deemed as inferiors and as the “other” they were being forced to wear symbols in their clothing to be identified by the regime. Second and third generations of Holocaust survivors carry the pain and trauma with them – they can also be called victims. Similar to Native American literature, Jewish American authors attempted to write about their history and struggles with their trauma.

2. THEORITICAL FRAMEWORK

This article, attempts to analyze how Sherman Alexie and Jerome Rothenberg represent generational trauma. While analyzing the selected poems and utilizing Cathy Caruth’s psychoanalytical theory on historical trauma Unacclaimed Experience (1996) it will provide a better understanding of Native American’s and Jews’ experiences. Caruth, a leading figure in psychoanalysis theory, builds her generational trauma theory from Freud’s theory on trauma. Caruth explains that trauma is a never-ending suffering and an ongoing experience for an individual: “the experience of a trauma repeats itself, exactly and unremittingly, through the unknowing acts of the survivor and against his very will” (as cited in Miehls, 2010, p. 151). Furthermore, she states while trauma is a single event in the brain of someone who experienced a traumatic event it still can be passed through people who share the same ancestry, history, or ethnicity.

3. DISCUSSION

3.1 Sherman Alexie’s Representation of Native Americans’ Genocide and Colonization

Sherman Alexie is a Native American poet, novelist, and storyteller. He was born on October 6, 1966, in the small town of Wellpinit in the state of Washington USA. After graduation, he started to publish poems, and he received positive reviews for his first book of poetry. New York Times called him: “one of the major lyric voices of our time” (as cited in Grassian, 2005, p.3). Alexie mostly writes about the experiences, struggles, and trauma of Natives. Alexie’s Summer of Black Widows collection of poetry was published in 1996. The poems discuss his family life, loss, grief, Native and American culture, as stated by Leibman:

Alexie’s elegies in The Summer of Black Widows take preservation and renewal as their explicit goal for the artist who confronts loss: of family members, the purity of Spokane lands, and people through genocide. In the midst of abandoned uranium mines, alcoholism, and despair, he searches for a means by which he can restore himself and his culture. (2005, p. 557).

The poem Fire as Verb and Noun is a part of the book The Summar of Black Widows, it is divided into thirteen sections. The unknown speaker of the poem describes the loss of his sister and brother-in-law in a fire. In which the speaker connects his mourning of the Native American Genocide and the Holocaust during World War II. The narrator imagines that he is a Jew and a Native American. The poem tries to compare the tragic history and suffering of his people to the Jews. He describes the color of the flames when their bodies were being burned – the fire can symbolize different interpretations. For instance; it may be connected with the violence and loss that Natives have suffered through during centuries. It shows the Genocide of Natives during all the wars while defending their lands. It also may be connected to how Jews were burned alive in the death camps. Moreover, it shows the speaker’s frustration and anger with all the deaths that he has been enduring in his life:

There is something about the color

of the flames that can reveal

what chemicals fuel the fire.

I remember that simple fact.

What color are the flames that rise

off a burning body?

What color were the flames that rose

off my sister’s and brother-in-law’s bodies? (Alexie, 1996, p. 52)

In the following lines, the speaker attempts to discuss his loss by using metaphoric language to make sense of his grief. The poem shows a comparison between the death of his family members to the Holocaust. However, he seems hesitant to make this comparison and fears the reader’s reaction and response, as discussed by Peterson: “The poem's self-consciousness about using the Holocaust in metaphoric terms takes on another level of signification as well, developing into a critical self-reflection on the ability of language to convey reality and tell the truth” (2010, p.17). Thus, this aligns with Lilian Friedberg’s statement that the Holocaust is widely recognized as a dark chapter of Germany’s history – unlike the US government which refuses to do the same with the Natives’ Genocide. Norman Finkelstein discusses that a museum does not exist in the USA to acknowledge the genocide and the crimes against the Natives. Still, there is a Holocaust Museum which: “particularly incongruous in the absence of a museum commemorating crimes in the course of American history” (as cited in Friedberg, 2000, p. 354).

Moreover, the narrator’s declaration of the suffering of himself and his family can be interpreted as a form of generational trauma. Which can be explained by Caruth’s theory that indicates trauma is shared by a group of people and could be inherited into many generations. Thus, we can see this idea in the following lines from the poem:

a Holocaust everywhere.

Let’s say I am a Jew.

I am a Jew

who lost a sister and brother-in-law

in the ovens

during World War II. No, let’s say

I am an American

Indian who had heated bayonets

held against his hands

until they blistered

and blossomed open. No, let’s say (Alexie, 1996, pp. 53-54)

The notion of Caruth’s theory can be caught here when the speaker mentions the horrific history of Natives and Jews. Caruth explains that trauma can be contagious and be passed through verbal or written stories between generations. Or going through a similar situation can trigger the trauma. In conclusion, the speaker of the poem goes through a traumatic experience when his family is burned and he connects this mourning and it is interconnected with the deaths and burning of previous generations.

The Exaggeration of Despair is another poem in Summer of Black Widows by Alexie. The main speaker of the poem who is a Native American discusses the struggles of his community as well as his own family. The speaker mentions several contentious issues that face the Native American communities, for instance; alcoholism, suicide, poverty, sexual assault, etc. The poem opens with the narration of an unknown speaker, he mentions a woman whose brother had attempted suicide right after her other brother had killed himself:

I open the door

(this Indian girl writes that her brother tried to hang himself with a belt just two weeks after her other brother did hang himself (Alexie, 1996, p. 96)

The poem begins with the speaker saying “I open the door” this could mean that he is opening the door of Native families and attempting to tell the story of these characters. For many generations, suicide has been one of the main causes of death in Native communities. Here, by mentioning that two brothers in one family attempt suicide shows how common it is. By grasping the historical background of Natives, it provides a better understanding how these traumas have been passed on through many generations. The marginalization of Natives through colonization and even after colonization created many sufferings – the Native American poet Paula Gunn Allen states: “many of us, just give up. Many are alcoholics, many are addicts. Many abandon the children, the old ones. Many commit suicide.” (1992, pp. 190-191). According to Thornton, the trauma of colonization is caused by forced removals, contagious diseases, and economic suffering. Furthermore, Thornton discuss that the U.S. government created various policies to dismantle the normal function of a family – children were forcefully taken away from their families and put into boarding schools (1998, pp. 62-63). In these schools, children were being taught to act, wear, and look, like a white person. They were being sexually and physically abused by the teachers. The students were not allowed to speak their Native languages, practice their religion, or show anything about their culture. In order to, make Natives part of the Anglo-American society. In other words, these schools were invented to erase the Natives’ culture (Haag, 2007, p. 154).

The speaker of The Exaggeration of Despair tries to highlight the emotional and physical abuse that these children had to endure for many years. The narrator remarks on a man who was raped by priests as a little boy when he was in boarding school:

and this Indian man tells us that, back in boarding school, five priests took him into a back room and raped him repeatedly (Alexie, 1996, p. 96).

Many Native children experienced these traumatic events in boarding schools. Hence, generational trauma is highlighted here it can be explained with Caruth’s theory: “history, like trauma, is never simply one’s own, that history is precisely the way we are implicated in each other’s traumas” (1996, p. 24). It can be grasped that history and trauma are intertwined, and they both have negative effects on particular groups of people. This unknown character who has been raped as a child shows us that his story is not only his own rather it can be the story many Native kids who have been forcefully taken away from their families and experienced abuse. The speaker does not imply the age of this unknown man, however, by the word “man” it shows that he is a grown up and still traumatized by the sexual harassment that he has endured as a young student. Caruth emphasizes that trauma can be difficult to express and it can affect an individual through memories and nightmares. This can also be true for rape as it is a violent act that may take a person years to process the trauma.

Moreover, the reader realizes the defragmented Native family when the narrator describes a child weeping at a dinner table because he has never experienced his family being at the same table enjoying dinner. The speaker never mentions the identity of the characters in the poem, which may indicate that this is the story of every Indigenous individual. The narrator starts to tell the stories of these characters with an open bracket and it closes and he starts to tell stories about his own family.

and this Indian child cries when he sits to eat at our table because he had never known his own family to sit at the same table (Alexie, 1996, p. 96).

The poem tackles various other subjects for instance poverty and alcoholism. These problems have continued for many generations. It is related to the struggles of generational trauma: “Alcoholism, intergenerational posttraumatic stress, and a spate of social and economic ills continue to plague these communities in the aftermath of the American Holocaust.” (Friedberg, 2000, p. 366). Native communities do not have economic support, and many of them are considered to live below the average poverty line (Ali, 2021, p. 336). The narrator then starts to tell stories about his own family, how his father was killed in the Vietnam War, and how his grandmother died while she was giving birth to his father. As well as how his grandmother assuming his other grandmother saw the white people coming to her land and expected that everything would change:

and this is my father, whose own father died on Okinawa, shot

by a Japanese soldier who must have looked so much like him

and this is my father, whose mother died of tuberculosis

not long after he was born, and so my father must hear coughing

ghosts

and this is my grandmother who saw, before the white men came,

three ravens with white necks, and knew our God was going to

change) (Alexie, 1996, p. 96).

At first glance the reader may believe that the tittle of the poem The Exaggeration of Despair, suggests that the represented grief is false or an overreaction, however, the content of the poem shows that it is not an exaggeration of their suffering. Thus, the title of the poem is ironic. Alexie often uses dark humor and irony in his writings as: “an effective strategy to point out historical and present conditions of inequality created by white hegemony and convey conflicts generated by assimilation” (as cited in Ali, 2021, p. 338).

Overall, the speaker of the poem portrays generational trauma by explaining the stories of Native Americans and how they share the same sufferings of poverty, sexual abuse, family dysfunctions, and alcohol/drug abuse.

3.2 Jerome Rothenberg’s Portrayal of the Holocaust and Displacement

Rothenberg is a Jewish American author born on December 11, 1931, in New York City, USA. He is a poet and translator, he has more than seventy collections of poetry. He is a well-known figure of modernism and tribalism: “which connects avant-garde concerns with the recuperation of the oral tradition of American native cultures and others” (Goicoechea, 2015, p. 137).

Rothenberg’s collection of poetry Poland/ 1931 was published in 1974, it is described as ancestral poetry, since Poland is the author’s homeland. He dedicates the poems to his people who suffered through the Holocaust. As described by Finkelstein: “In Poland/1931, Rothenberg is interested in presenting a particular vision of Jewish history and identity, the dark underside of Jewishness as it is understood by the assimilated (or at least acculturated) Jewish community of post- war America” (1998, p. 365).

Poland/ 1931 ‘The Fish’ is a short poem in the collection, the author describes his homeland. In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland with the help of the Soviet Union – which marked the start of the Second World War. Jews in Poland had to wear David stars to be identified by the regime, sent to labor camps, and live in the ghettos. From 1939 to 1940 approximately 100,000 Jews were killed. The regime made Jews stay at the camps or the ghettos while they were waiting to be forcefully deported (Imperial War Museums. n.d).

The unknown speaker refers to Poland as “dead”, which could refer to the catastrophic deaths that the country has seen. The narrator retells those lines which may be told by his son. It can be interpreted that the characters of the poem are attempting to connect with their Polish heritage. In a sense, it shows a loss of identity. Therefore, these lines may portray the struggles of Jewish immigrants and how their children do not have a connection with their ancestors’ homeland. Meilicke (2005) explains that the speaker uses the metaphor “blind” to describe Poland. This could be a connection to: “those who cannot see are the descendants of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Their children suffer from the “death of Poland.”” (p. 175).

Thus, the son is thinking about “what could have been” if he had lived and experienced his childhood in his father’s homeland. Jews have faced the same struggles in many generations for instance; refuge and displacement. According to Benish-Weisman (2009) displacement is not only moving from a particular place to another rather it has psychological effects on individuals: “The experience of immigration is unsettling—in both a physical and an emotional sense, leading to estrangement from the familiar and the predictable and challenging immigrants with the unfamiliar and the unexpected.” (p. 953).

As previously mentioned second and third generations of Holocaust survivors are referred to as “victims”. Even if they have not been through the act of immigration and displacement– they are still bound by the same traumatic memories as their forefathers: “From the psychoanalytic point of view the Jewish people can be seen not only as a socio- religious group, but also as a group united by a common trauma.” (as cited in Aarons & Berger, 2017, p. 3). Here, in the poem we as the reader witness the generational trauma – presumably a son or a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor recalls the frightening history of Poland. The son also appears to be emotional over the loss of connection with Poland as seen in these lines: “& so we live without associations …. in the past we live” (Rothenberg, 1974, p. 15).

Moreover, the poem portrays conflicting emotions as the characters appear stagnant in the memory of the past and the inability to change history – seemingly, unable to move forward. Thus, the words “alive” and “lazy” create a paradoxical idea, lazy could refer to the inaction of the son to move on, and alive refers to the constant attachment to history:

the dead fish has no eyes says

my son, poland

has no eyes

& so we live without associations

in the past we live

nourishing incredible polands

lazy & alive remembering

our mothers’ pictures in the grass (Rothenberg, 1974, p. 15)

To conclude, Poland/ 1931 ‘The Fish’ is a poem that paints a bleak image of the Jewish Polish people’s history with Nazi occupation. In addition to portraying Jews’ suppression and how the trauma passed through these generations. If we integrate Cathy Caruth's explanation of Sigmund Freud’s theory on trauma, we can fathom the character’s difficulties and sufferings. She states trauma becomes a repetitive process for the survivor and it never becomes weaker:

Freud points out, these repetitions are particularly striking because they seem not to be initiated by the individual’s own acts but rather appear as the possession of some people by a sort of fate, a series of painful events to which they are subjected, and which seem to be entirely outside their wish or control. (1996, pp. 1-2).

Esther K. Comes to America: 1931 is a poem in the previously mentioned collection. The narrator tells the story of possibly his grandmother or another ancestor’s immigration to America. From the title of the poem, we can infer that Esther K. immigrated from Poland to America in 1931, before the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It was a difficult time for Jewish Europeans and perhaps she escaped in hopes of a better life. She meets a man named Leo Levy in a cafeteria in Housten. The speaker mentions that at the beginning Leo and Esther K. do not converse together, however, they share a bond of separation from their homelands and the feeling of displacement. The two characters attempt to adjust to life in America. The poem tries to show that if these two characters perhaps had different identities, they would have an easier or a more comfortable life.

The Wilderness: but otherwise

name of a cafeteria

where the two lovers drink tea

not speaking to each other

but sharing a world through separation: (Rothenberg, 1986, p. 23).

The speaker tells a series of traumatic events that have happened to Esther K. Firstly, the speaker describes how overwhelming it was for her to leave a comfortable life behind that she knew and to step into an unfamiliar world full of uncertainty. Which emphasizes the pain of arriving in America. Furthermore, the poem portrays how the speaker becomes stressed by everyday life situations like seeing traffic. Perhaps because she sees a chaotic place which takes a psychological toll on her: “as the first step outside the glass door the first sight of traffic …even the rumblings of the new subway under Houston Street” (Rothenberg, 1986, p. 23).

The narrator mentions the following events have been happening for a very long time, so from these lines, we can understand two interpretations either the trauma she has been suffering from has happened to her in the past. Or that her ancestors have been through trauma many years prior. In the next few lines, the poem explains that Esther K. has been “tormented” by a priest – the word “torment” perhaps refers to sexual abuse that she endured, and it caused her great suffering and pain. Caruth explains that sexual abuse and rape create a post-traumatic stress disorder for an individual who has gone through this experience (1996, p. 11). It explains the difficult events that follow her. The line: “the governor broke into sighs & that was another” is an ambiguous sentence, which may allude to not being represented by authority figures in America, thus she might feel unsafe in her new environment. The poem does not delve into Esther K.’s past in detail, only mentions her mother has become “Incontinence” which could mean that she has been through trauma and stress and it affected her physical health:

all this happened in the course of ages

the priest tormented her & that was one

the governor broke into sighs & that was another

her mother became incontinent & that was the third

other events followed: fourth was the birth

of a child dead at childbirth (Rothenberg, 1986, p. 23).

The poem, by telling the story of these two fictional Jewish characters explores, the themes of displacement and historical trauma. And the obstacles that Jews faced while moving to an unknown land. The poem’s next few sections represent the character’s fantasies – how they wish if their heritage, religion, and ethnicity were different then their lives would have been different and perhaps they would have been happier, and their lives would have different outcomes. However, the end of the poem breaks this fictional imagination by presenting a bleak image that in reality the fiction would not make them happier:

to be learned: a source of fortune

only too distant without refinement

both will grow sick & die

much later: separate beds

wait for them (Rothenberg, 1986, p. 24).

4. CONCLUSION

This present article examined selected poetry by Sherman Alexie and Jerome Rothenberg. It applied Cathy Caruth’s theory on generational/ historical trauma. In addition to that, it analyzed how these authors represented the generational trauma of Native and Jewish Americans. The analysis focused on the selected poems’ depiction of the lasting effects of historical tragedies such as: Holocaust and colonization across generations. Moreover, this article also shed light on the similarities between the poetry of Alexie’s and Rothenberg’s poetry. Regarding that, these two authors highlight the trauma of their people which has been transmitted through many generations such as; sexual abuse, displacement, loss of identity, pain of immigration, exile, memory of the past, and drug/alcohol abuse.

REFERENCES

Aarons, V., & Berger, A. (2017). Third-generation Holocaust representation: Trauma, history, and memory. Illinois, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

Ali, N., (2021). Sherman Alexie: Poet of the Reservations. Journal of Arts, Literature, Humanities, and Social Sciences. 64, pp.335-350.

Allen, P.G., (1992). The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions. Massachusetts: Boston: Beacon Press.

Benish-Weisman, M., (2009). Between trauma and redemption: Story form differences in immigrant narratives of successful and nonsuccessful immigration. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(6), pp.953-968.

Caruth, C., (2016). Unclaimed experience: Trauma, narrative, and history. London: JHU press.

Finkelstein, N., (1998). The Messianic Ethnography of Jerome Rothenberg's" Poland/1931". Contemporary Literature, 39(3), pp.356-379.

Friedberg, L., (2000). Dare to compare: Americanizing the Holocaust. American Indian Quarterly, 24(3), pp.353-380.

Goicoechea, M., (2015). The mechanic ear: North American sound poetry in the digital age. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 23, pp.129-152.

Grassian, D., (2005). Understanding Sherman Alexie. South Carolina, Columbia: Univ of South Carolina Press.

Haag, A.M., (2007). The Indian boarding school era and its continuing impact on tribal families and the provision of government services. Tulsa L. Rev., 43(1), pp.149-168.

Hollrah, P., (2004). The Old Lady Trill, the Victory Yell: The Power of Women in Native American Literature. New York, NY: Routledge.

Imperial War Museums. Org. (n. d). Imperial War Museums. [Online]. Available at: IWM North_KS3 KS4_Holocaust Historical Notes.pdf (Accessed: 3 March 2024).

Leibman, L.A., (2005). A bridge of difference: Sherman Alexie and the politics of mourning. American Literature, 77(3), pp.541-561.

Meilicke, C.A., (2005). Jerome Rothenberg's Experimental Poetry and Jewish Tradition. New Jersey: Lehigh University Press.

Miehls, D., (2010). Contemporary trends in supervision theory: A shift from parallel process to relational and trauma theory. Clinical Social Work Journal, 38, pp.370-378.

Peterson, N. J. (2010). " If I were Jewish, how would I mourn the dead?": Holocaust and Genocide in the Work of Sherman Alexie. Melus, 35(3), 63-84.

Rothenberg, J. (1974). Poland/1931. New York, NY: New Directions.

Rothenberg, J., (1986). New selected poems, 1970-1985 (Vol. 625). New York, NY: New Directions Publishing.

Thornton, R. ed., (1998). Studying native America: problems and prospects. Wisconsin: Univ of Wisconsin Press.

Totten, S. ed., (2006). Teaching about genocide: Issues, approaches, and resources. USA: IAP.

USC Sohoa Foundation.edu. (n.d). USC Sohoa Foundation. [Online]. Available at: https://vhap.usc.edu/vhap.iwitness.appdata/historicalcontext/en/Holocaust.pdf (Accessed: 3 March 2024).

* Corresponding Author.

This is an open access under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)