In recent years, intergenerational trauma has become a much larger talking point in society as our understanding of exactly what it means grows and changes with the times. Sophie Isobel and her colleagues use Hesse and Main’s definition of intergenerational trauma as “the process by which parents with unresolved trauma transmit this to their children via specific interactional patterns, resulting in the effects of trauma being experienced without the original traumatic experience or event.” (Isobel et. al, 2018) when looking at how to prevent it. As its relevancy in pop culture grows, we can find it being discussed in our daily lives through commonly consumed mediums such as music, movies, or television. My favourite musical artist, Kendrick Lamar, is known for covering a variety of societal issues in his music such as racism and consumerism. In his most recent album from 2022, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, intergenerational trauma was a prominent focus. Most blatantly, Lamar talks about the trauma passed down to him from his father in the song appropriately titled Father Time featuring Sampha. 

The song opens with Lamar’s wife suggesting that he goes to therapy, which he reacts negatively to, saying “Real n**** need no therapy, fuck you talkin’ about?” This is a line that Kendrick refers to as his favourite from the album in an interview with Spotify because Lamar feels it accurately conveys how therapy and doctors, in general, are stigmatized in Black American culture. “We learn to hold our shit in… You know, I’m still stuck how my pops think, ‘fuck you need therapy for?’” (“A Day in Ghana With Kendrick Lamar”, 2:25). Through the two verses in the song, Lamar shows his love for his father being there as opposed to many of his peers who grew up without fathers, while at the same time trying to sort through the trauma he inherited. This duality between the positive and the negative impact these ‘lessons’ of stoicism, and attempts to teach him ‘how to be a man’ had on Kendrick is the main theme of the song. In the first verse his dad pushes him far while playing basketball, ignoring his foul calls, and when his mom says “That boy is exhausted,” he said, “Go fuck yourself, If he give up now, that’s gon’ cost him, life’s a bitch”  (Lamar). The positive side is that he learned how it feels to lose and to get back up and keep pushing, but the other side of the coin is that he develops “A foolish pride” and they’re going to be “sore losers forever” (Lamar). 

The second verse delves deeper into the lingering emotional struggles in his adult life stemming from Kendrick’s upbringing. As a kid, he was “Lookin’ for “I love you,” but his dad rarely showed him affection. He mentions how quickly he would bounce back from a scraped knee, because if he cried he would be shamed for showing weakness. This taught him to hide his emotions because “Men should never show feelings, being sensitive never helped” (Lamar). Kendrick then provides some insight into why his dad raised him the way he did: “His momma died, I asked him why he goin’ back to work so soon? His first reply was “Son, that’s life, the bills got no silver spoon” (Lamar). From his dad’s perspective, coming from poverty, you can’t stew in your feelings because it’ll take away from making money, and the world waits for no one. You’ll be left a day late and a dollar short. Because of this perspective, Lamar’s dad taught him “fuck everybody, go get your money, son, Protect yourself, trust nobody” except for his mom. (Lamar). A lesson which Kendrick says “made relationships seem cloudy, never attached to none So if you took some likings around [him], [he] might reject the love” (Lamar). Appearing throughout the entire album, difficulties with his relationship with his current wife, as well as other women in his life including family and past lovers are highlighted in songs like Auntie Diaries and Mother I Sober. However, Lamar partially credits his success to his father’s lessons in the second verse, as these “Daddy issues kept [him] competitive, that’s a fact” (Lamar). 

Kendrick then raps about the other ways in which this cycle is perpetuated within African American communities, people who “got no daddy, grow up overcompensatin’”, that “Learn shit ’bout bein’ a man and disguise it as bein’ gangsta” (Lamar). This relates to how young men without father figures often turn to media or other older men in their community, which often portray manhood as it pertains to organized crime. Finally, Lamar addresses his hope for what men listening take away from this song, hoping that they can neutralize this trauma to avoid passing it down to their own children, and to “give the women a break” (Lamar), acknowledging the pain and strife he put his own wife through while trying to cope with issues from his childhood. Kendrick poses intergenerational trauma as something that can be healed and a cycle that can be broken. Similarly to Isobel who claims that healing trauma as an adult through “a combination of verbal and nonverbal psychotherapeutic approaches” is the best way to prevent trauma transmission to children (Isobel et. al, 2018), Kendrick decides “To challenge [him]self to go to therapy.”, saying “Shit, that’s like a whole new step, in a whole new generation. It’s growth.” (“A Day in Ghana With Kendrick Lamar”, 2:43). The impact of Kendrick Lamar’s music is undeniable, with his song Alright becoming a sort of anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement early on in 2015, it’s clear that he understands this impact. Consistently using his music to cover new issues he sees in his communities and society altogether while promoting healing is nice to see from an artist of his magnitude, and I can only hope people listen to Father Time and focus on destigmatizing men’s mental health and what it means to ‘be a man’ to prevent continuous intergenerational trauma in father-son relationships. 

Sources Cited

Isobel, Sophie, et al. “Preventing Intergenerational Trauma Transmission: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis.” Preventing Intergenerational Trauma Transmission: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis, 16 Dec. 2018, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jocn.14735. 

“A Day in Ghana With Kendrick Lamar.” YouTube, Spotify, 17 June 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU4q-UqIW38. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023. 

Lamar, Kendrick. “Father Time Feat. Sampha.” Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, Top Dawg Entertainment, 2022, track 5. Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/track/4xIhSUJantE6BMl3u8dtCJ

This week we have started to talk about Indigenous issues and I have stressed the importance of positioning ourselves in the conversation. Position yourself here. What is your relationship to the land you are from, or the land you are studying on? From what position will you approach the novel Indian Horse, which takes up the topic of colonialism?

I feel like I’ve got a good relationship with the land I’m living on. I never litter, and I go on hikes with my sister where we pick up any garbage we see to throw it out properly later. I feel extremely privileged to be living somewhere that has so much natural beauty and try to always be appreciative of that. My parents built a tiny home on Mayne Island, one of the gulf islands below Vancouver Island. Last summer my dad and I built a small sleeping cabin, and since then I’ve been a few times on my own and with friends. It’s a really peaceful getaway from the busy lives we have here on the mainland and serves as a reminder that the massive skyscrapers and cityscapes we’re used to aren’t the natural state of things.

I understand that I wouldn’t have any of these privileges if it weren’t for the horrible history of colonialism in Canada and though those wrongs can’t entirely be reversed, I try my best to contribute to reconciliation. In high school I took all available courses that were centered around Indigenous peoples, seeking education on the beliefs and traditions of the different nations, as well as the experiences many Indigenous people went through and continue to go through as a result of colonialism. Through seeking education I have not only enriched my own learning, but I’ve also been able to extend it to alter the views of people around me for the better. (such as insensitive and uneducated extended family members.)

Because of the courses I took in high school, I’ve already read this book a couple times, but am interested to look at it differently now due to my higher education and understanding of the scholarly conversation.

Reflect on what you learned in Term 1 and some goals you have for yourself for ASTU in term 2. What would you like to learn? What will you do to enable that?

In Term 1 I learned that I’m capable of more than I think, and need to stop second-guessing myself so much in completing my work. I often doubt whether my ideas and/or products when I’m working on assignments are “good enough”, which leads to many full resets. This makes projects take much longer than they probably should, in turn putting a ton of unnecessary stress on myself. During Term 1 I learned to let that go and trust my ability to put together a strong piece of work.

A goal I have for Term 2 in ASTU is to manage my time better. I would like to get started on projects earlier than usual. This would allow me to better plan and format my projects, as well as reducing stress throughout the whole process of each assignment. To achieve this goal, I think I need to look further ahead in the schedule so I’m better prepared for what’s coming up. Something else that would help me accomplish this goal could be to lay out my own timeline in relation to assignments. Creating a tighter schedule for myself would encourage and remind me to stay ahead of the curve on due dates, and also prevent me from wasting time doing nothing, when I could be doing work.

Another goal I have for Term 2 is to complete all these blogs. In Term 1 I left quite a few points on the table because I either forgot altogether or blanked on what to write about, telling myself I’d get back to it. (I often didn’t get back to it.) I think these prompts are going to make that a lot easier, as well as the due dates. Something I personally could do to help myself achieve this goal, again, would be to set reminders so I don’t forget about them. This ties in with my first goal, where I could relieve the stress around these blogs by not leaving them to the last minute to complete.

I found Butler’s writing extremely interesting. Although at the start it was difficult to read, I felt like the middle part was a bit easier to understand. A key idea that I was able to grasp was Butler’s framing of responsibility after she used the term ‘responsibilization’, for which she used France as an example. Where poor immigrants are given less social benefits, the government is reframing the responsibility of basic survival by placing it on the individual. As Butler goes on to say, this raises many questions. “Am I responsible only to myself? Are there others for whom I am responsible? And how do I, in general, determine the scope of my responsibility?” (pg. 34).

These questions resonate with me. From my perspective I believe there isn’t a specific ‘right’ answer. Answers likely vary from person to person, and may even change throughout the course of one’s life. For example two people in the same group may feel differently. For example a 22-year-old living by themself away from family may feel responsible only to themself, but someone else in the same position may feel more compassionate and see themselves responsible for younger siblings or family members, or even close friends. In my eyes neither person is particularly wrong or right, they just have different perspectives. That same 22-year-old who originally felt responsible just for themself could potentially have a different answer ten years down the line when they have a wife and kids they find themselves feeling responsible for. As for the question of how to dtermine the scope of one’s responsibility, I have no response. At least not one I could articulate properly. Maybe in ten years’ time I’ll have an answer.

In my blog today I’ll be going over my general thoughts on the graphic narrative, as well as highlighting a few pages or sections that were particularly striking to me. Overall, I loved the illustrations and the way they often broke the typical comic book format by often removing the grid or breaking through those lines. I think the dull blacks and greys along with the persistent reddish-orange colouring fit the tone and mood of the story extremely well. 

As for the actual story, I felt it was amazing. Bui’s way of tying her family’s past and how that impacts her own present stuck out to me, especially in the end when she seems to cut that tie when speaking about her son. On the final two pages (pg. 328-329) she says “when I look at my son… I don’t see war and loss, or even Travis and me. I see a new life bound with mine quite by coincidence, and I think maybe he can be free.” This seems to contradict how she sees her relationship with her own parents on page 324 where she questions, “how much of ME is my own, and how much is stamped into my blood and bone, predestined?”, and says how she “used to imagine that history had… seeped through [her parents’] skin and become a part of their world.” 

Two more sections that stuck out to me:

Page 302-305

I chose this section for my close reading assignment, so I won’t go into too much detail. Bui talks about the time a fire broke out at her downstairs neighbour’s place. It highlights the instinctual difference caused by their past of fleeing Vietnam. This section ended with a phrase that stuck with me: “My Refugee Reflex.” talking about her immediate instinct to grab their important documents and get out as quick as possible.

Page 316-319

In this section, Bui highlights something I personally have felt, the inability to see your parents as anything but that. It often hits me out of nowhere, the idea that my parents are two people with lives of their own. Lives that existed before I did, lives that are separate from mine. Though a large part of their life has been dedicated to taking care of me and my siblings, it’s important for us to recognize that they require some type of life outside of ours. I feel like this truth often doesn’t process with people until they themselves become a parent like Thi Bui did.

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