Sabiya Kathiria Week 15: Generational Traumas and Patterns
Generational Traumas and Patterns
As we read Beloved in class, I realized that the overall theme of Sethe’s story has a link to other stories of trauma passed down generations. Sethe slits her baby’s throat to ensure it escapes the bonds of slavery, a brave but misguided attempt at breaking the generational cycle of oppression that Sethe and her ancestors have endured.
It Ends With Us, a controversial book by Colleen Hoover, carries a similar message of ending generational trauma. Despite the controversy surrounding the novel and some of its other themes, It Ends With Us ultimately underscores the importance of breaking the generational trauma of domestic violence, however difficult it may be.
Growing up in an immigrant household, I was raised in a more strict way than most. Always feeling like I can’t share much with my parents, I keep most of my life hidden from my mom and dad; attempts to bring up daily occurrences at school and with friends are met with questions about college, internships, and grades. Recently, with senior year and college applications closer than ever, these questions seem never-ending and make up almost all my interactions with my parents. While I am grateful they care enough to be concerned, I yearn for a relationship with my parents not based on my successes and failures academically. I yearn to come home from a hard day at school and tell my mom about it, to discuss boys and promposals and makeup without a cynical undertone. I yearn to talk to my dad about a book I read or movie I watched, without him asking why I am wasting time that should be spent working.
Children of South-Asian immigrant households especially often have closed-off relationships with their parents, at least from what I know with my own experience and the experiences of those around me. Closed-off relationships breed mistrust and deception, severing an irreplaceable bond that is meant to be fruitful and unconditional. I recognize that this situation is not nearly as important or tumultuous as the generational cycle of oppression or domestic violence in our society. But even in the book Everything I Never Told You, we learned that the pressure from our parents replaces the value and validation that we have as humans, instead rendering us to be pushed around and losing every ounce of trust we have in our family. In Lydia’s case, it led to death.
The generational cycle and pattern that immigrant parents so often show in pressuring their children to fit into a perfect mold of what they “should be” must be addressed. It is up it us, the new generation, to put an end to it and break the cycle that has broken so many others.
Hi Sabiya! As a child of immigrants myself, your blog was honestly really relatable. The divide between my own personal desires and my parents’ expectations of me is something that I’ve also contended with for a long time. While our parents mean well by wanting us to succeed and avoid the problems they endured, I do agree with you that the constant prioritization of academics over emotional well-being is genuinely very suffocating. I especially liked the structure of your blog, and how you started off by talking about your own experiences with your parents, then shifting to stating the effects of these kinds of relationships on children, and ending off with a very important call to action. Your discussion of the pressure to constantly perform and the lack of emotional connection that comes with it from our parents is something I struggle with when it comes to my own family, and seeing it written out made me feel a lot less alone. Overall, your writing was incredibly powerful, and I look forward to your insights in the future!
ReplyDeleteHi Sabiya! First of all, call me delusional, but I have been enjoying Beloved ever since we started reading it in class. I thought the story of a young mother killing her baby only for the ghost of her baby to come back from the dead to haunt her was rather interesting, and the undertones of slavery and the generational traumas that stem from that experience has definitely made the novel more appealing to me and developed my understanding of how trauma perpetuates over many generations. I also appreciate how you continue to connect generational traumas and patterns to other novels—from those we have read in class to others you have read on your own time. It has definitely made me realize just how much of an impact generational trauma has on its descendants and how those behaviors impact others both within that generation and future generations. I do relate to the experience of having closed-off relationships with my parents to some extent. Sometimes, I feel like I would be bothering my parents whenever I talk to them about my day or what I have been busy, and the fear of coming off as self-absorbed when I am simply talking about what has been keeping me busy or bothered has also impacted my relationship with my parents. Hopefully, others who share similar experiences of this and I overcome these hurdles and connect with our families with ease and without fear, which is why it is so important to address generational patterns within our families to ensure that we live safely and that future generations do not need to put up with these struggles. Thank you for writing this blog, Sabiya, and I look forward to your next one!
ReplyDeleteHi Sabiya! I am really glad that someone chose to touch upon this highly applicable subject. In a very diverse school, I think that this blog can be deemed relatable by various different people, all to certain extents. I personally, am very lucky to have a pretty open relationship with my parents, but even with that, I find there are still things that I have to keep to myself, as I know their ideals would fall in conflict with it, and would most likely trigger an argument. I really liked how you managed to connect the topic of generational to literary works, even including one we are studying as a class. Thank you so much for sharing!
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