by Matt Peters The trauma of violence can linger decades later, waiting for the slightest reminder to bring it back to the surface. A resemblance of something from the past can steal the survivor from the present, forcing them to relive a separation, a loss, or an atrocity. Clinical terms like post-traumatic stress disorder can’t fully describe how the experience permeates a survivor’s life, turning the past into something inescapable. It can haunt not only survivors but also their posterity, as behavioral cues and epigenetic markers—chemical changes to DNA—are passed on to the next generation, causing the initial shock… Read More
the tenderness of stones
awaiting review
Billy, Me & You: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery
Guest review by Dr. Sathyaraj Venkatesan and Anu Mary Peter, National Institute of Technology, India. Review Published in 2011 by Myriad Editions, Billy, Me & You: A Memoir of Grief and Recovery (hereafter Billy, Me & You) is a graphic memoir by Nicola Streeten, an illustrator and academic. Serialized initially in Liquorice magazine, Billy, Me & You was later collected into a graphic novel thirteen years after the death of Billy, author’s first child who died after cardiac surgery at the age of two. Suffused with subtle humor, if the memoir chronicles the complexities of human grief and bereavement it also deftly records the emotional… Read More