Tag: intergenerational trauma

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The Daughter Who Refused to be Silent

This is a story of becoming — not in spite of the silence, but through it.

Creator:
Lavleen Walia ਲਵਲੀਨ ਵਾਲੀਆ

For South Asian women, one cannot escape the clutches of izzat – a cultural concept (akin to “honour”) that dictates nearly ever aspect of their lives including how they carry themselves in the home and in public, who they are friends with, and who their partners are. Moreover, asymmetrical gender expectations in many South Asian communities (including diasporic ones) often mean that South Asian women and girls are held to a much higher standard for maintaining the family’s honour than are South Asian men and boys (who are certainly also subject to expectations based on izzat too). In a series of poems, Lavleen articulates the different ways in which her life (which is stereotypical of many other South Asian Canadian women’s), along with familial interactions and her connection with herself, have all been strongly impacted by izzat. Even if your langauge doesn’t include the concept of izzat, has your life been impacted by a similar concept?


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Emotional Damage – EEAAO

The model minority myth adds another layer of complexity to our understanding of intergenerational trauma

Creator:
Meagan Ng 吳曦琳 (she/hers)

Media representation is an important factor for how people understand themselves – who they are, what their identity is, and how to think about their experiences. For cultural minorities in society, they are often left with stereotyped roles that both leave a small space within which individuals can imagine themselves, and never really accurately portray their cultural experiences. Throughout Asian Canadian/American history, few media productions have been able to do justice to Asian diasporic experiences; but Everything, Everywhere, All At Once shattered barriers and allowed the Asian diaspora to really see themselves and their experiences be portrayed effectively in Hollywood. In her paper, Meagan delves into how the movie deftly portrays the cultural nuances of sensitive themes like intergenerational trauma and mental health stigma. If you’ve watched the movie, how did you feel about the movie’s portrayal of cultural themes?

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Lost in Language

Growing up in Canada my whole life, I didn’t know [the Japanese language or Japanese traditions], and I felt a sense of shame.

Creator:
Miranda (Kimiko) Tsuyuki (she/her)

Trauma isn’t something that just one person experiences – it’s something that a whole community can experience. This kind of trauma can even have intergenerational effects that ripple through time. The Canadian government is no stranger to inflicting this kind of pain given its historical and ongoing genocidal actions against Indigenous people. While on a much smaller scale, Japanese Canadian communities along the west coast were forced to reckon with its own collective trauma. The Japanese internment during World War 2 ripped families apart, forcibly extricated citizens from their homes, confiscated citizens’ property, and even forcefully repatriated Japanese Canadians back to Japan despite it being a completely foreign land to many affected people. This led many Japanese Canadians to make the difficult choice of eschewing their own culture in hopes that future descendants would not be subject to such painful and humiliating discrimination. So how does one living amidst all of this find their way back?

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