WRI 001 Part 2 Project by Chris Siegal

Generational Trauma

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 05:35:02 UTC

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 05:40:00 UTC

People are not perfect, nor are families. In a way all of us are just fucked up amalgamations of our parents and our experiences. But a lot of that imperfection can come from generational trauma; when an action taken by a previous generation causes ripple effects of trauma down the generations. Its taken its hold in families across the world. But we don't have to keep the cycle going. We can choose to break it.

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 05:49:51 UTC

Amy Tan experienced the potential start of generational trauma. In her article Mother Tongue, she talks about how she resented her mothers "imperfect" English and wanted to make sure her children wouldn't live with the same shame. This could have evolved into Tan rejecting her Chinese heritage and causing that generational trauma in her future generations. But she was able to avoid this by accepting her heritage and deciding to not start that cycle.

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 05:53:18 UTC

My father decided against continuing his own generational trauma. My fathers family escaped Nazi Austria and Czechoslovakia in the early years of WWII. That passed down its own horrors with trust and abuse. My dad withstood the abuse he faced from his father. This left him with anger issues that still persist today, but with my brother and I we saw his progress into who he is today.

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 05:56:00 UTC

Sinners showcases a monster of a villain, a vampire. But this vampire isn't just any normal allegory. For the film uses vampires to represent the generational trauma that black people faced. The vampires represent the violence and hatred that minorities faced under Jim Crow laws and how people wanted to fight back. But the main characters fight back and decide to end it once and for all, again breaking the cycle.

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 06:00:33 UTC

Encanto focuses on a family of special powers. But the main antagonist of the film is the families matriarch, Abuela. Abuela was shown to have lost her husband early into their marriage, as she had only just had her children by the time he died. Her circumstances left her without any time to process the pain she was feeling, culminating into her work centric behavior that borders on abusive towards her children. She forces her children to work their hardest to provide for the village, leaving no time for personal emotions or feelings. But the main character rectifies this trauma with a heartfelt 1 to 1 with her. Her trauma over her husbands death led to harm coming to the family, but that doesn't mean we can't fix it and walk towards a better future

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 06:05:14 UTC

Gloria Anzaldua talks about her Chicana background and the problems with being a women in that culture. She speaks on how women view each other with hostility because they are a mirror into their own shame in their language. They feel inferior because of the way they talk or the way they dress. She breaks this cycle with her own children as she doesn't teach them to feel shame about their language

csiegal66 — 2025-05-13 06:11:27 UTC

Sherman Alexie talks about how his classmates on the reservation would intentionally seem dumb in front of teachers, trying to make themselves seem hopeless so theyll be left alone. This behavior is instilled in them, this feeling of disregard for their education because what they need to know can only be taught by family. But Alexie goes against this and strives to learn as much as he can, just like his father. He ends this trauma of acting weak so that he could strive to be better. He broke the cycle to benefit the generations that come after him.