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Traumatic experiences and their consequences are often the core of life stories told by survivors of violence. In Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors leading academics explore the relationship between the experiences of terror and helplessness that have caused trauma, the ways in which survivors remember, and the representation of these memories in the language and form of their life stories.International case studies include the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the life stories of Guatemalan war widows, violence in South Africa, persecution of political prisoners in South Africa and the former Czechoslovakia, lynching in the Mississippi Delta, resistance in Zimbabwe's liberation war, sexual abuse, and the ongoing Irish troubles. The volume reveals the complexity of remembering and forgetting traumatic experiences, and shows that survivors are likely to express themselves in stories containing elements that are imaginary, fragmented, and loaded with symbolism. Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors is a groundbreaking work of relevance across the social sciences. This new perspective on trauma will be of particular importance to researchers in psychology, history, women's studies, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.

Kim Lacy Rogers is professor of history and American studies at Dickinson College.

Graham Dawson teaches cultural and historical studies at the University of Brighton. His publications include Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities, and Trauma and Life Stories (with Kim Lacy Rogers and Selma Leydesdorff).

Selma Leydesdorff is professor of oral history and culture at the University of Amsterdam and is co-editor (with Nanci Adler) of the Memory and Narrative series for Transaction Publishers