What is the role of aesthetic expression in responding to discrimination, tragedy, violence, even genocide? How does gender shape responses to both literal and structural violence, including implicit linguistic, familial, and cultural violence? How might writing or other works of art contribute to healing? Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda explores the possibility of art as therapeutic, capable of implementation by mental health practitioners crafting mental health policy in Rwanda.
This anthology of scholarly, personal, and hybrid essays was inspired by scholar and activist Chantal Kalisa (1965-2015). At the commemoration of the nineteenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, organized by the Rwandan Embassy in Washington DC, Kalisa gave a presentation, "Who Speaks for the Survivors of the Genocide against Tutsi?" Kalisa devoted her energy to giving expression to those whose voices had been distorted or silenced. The essays in this anthology address how the production and experience of visual, dramatic, cinematic, and musical arts, in addition to literary arts, contribute to healing from the trauma of mass violence, offering preliminary responses to questions like Kalisa's and honoring her by continuing the dialogue in which she participated with such passion, sharing the work of scholars and colleagues in genocide studies, gender studies, and francophone literatures.
What is the role of aesthetic expression in responding to discrimination, tragedy, violence, even genocide? How does gender shape responses to both literal and structural violence, including implicit linguistic, familial, and cultural violence? How might writing or other works of art contribute to healing? Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda explores the possibility of art as therapeutic, capable of implementation by mental health practitioners crafting mental health policy in Rwanda.
This anthology of scholarly, personal, and hybrid essays was inspired by scholar and activist Chantal Kalisa (1965-2015). At the commemoration of the nineteenth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda, organized by the Rwandan Embassy in Washington DC, Kalisa gave a presentation, "Who Speaks for the Survivors of the Genocide against Tutsi?" Kalisa devoted her energy to giving expression to those whose voices had been distorted or silenced. The essays in this anthology address how the production and experience of visual, dramatic, cinematic, and musical arts, in addition to literary arts, contribute to healing from the trauma of mass violence, offering preliminary responses to questions like Kalisa's and honoring her by continuing the dialogue in which she participated with such passion, sharing the work of scholars and colleagues in genocide studies, gender studies, and francophone literatures.
List of Illustrations
Foreword, by Patricia A. Simpson
Acknowledgments
Introduction, by Rangira Béa Gallimore and Gerise
Herndon
Part I. In Memoriam: Lessons Learned from Chantal Kalisa
1. Baby Steps
Margaret Jacobs
2. Speaking Nearby Genocide
Gerise Herndon
3. Chantal’s Voice: A Guiding Light
Natalia Ledford
4. Bittersweet Realities: Field Research, Human Rights, and
Questioning Intentions
Laura Roost and Ryan Lowry, with Patrice McMahon
5. Memory, Language, and Healing
Isabel Velázquez
Part II. Performing Arts and Healing from the Genocide against the
Tutsi in Rwanda
6. Theater and the Rwandan Genocide
Chantal Kalisa
7. Ingoma Nshya: Forbidden Fruit Brings Healing and Empowerment to
Rwandan Female Drummers
Rangira Béa Gallimore
Part III. Visualizing Violence, Silence, and Trauma
8. The Films of Kivu Ruhorahoza: Staging a New Sense of
Direction?
Odile Cazenave and Patricia-Pia Célérier
9. Héla Ammar: Art and Beyond
Anna Rocca
10. Filming with Orphans of the Genocide: A Transformative Dialogue
through a Double-Lens Approach
Alexandre Dauge-Roth
11. Art for Teaching and Art for Surviving: From the Holocaust to
Healing
Eileen M. Angelini and Heather E. Connell
Part IV. Narrating Atrocities and Dealing with Trauma
12. Gender-Based Violence in Monique Ilboudo’s Fiction
Nicki Hitchcott
13. Narrating Itsembabwoko and the Quest for Empathy
Josias Semujanga
14. “Lay Down Body, Lay Down”: Mitigating Transgenerational Trauma
through Spirituality in Jewell Parker Rhodes’s Magic
City
Kalenda Eaton
Part V. Scripting Self and Healing in Women’s Narratives
15. Womenʼs Friendship in Exile: Healing in the Epistolary
Correspondence between Zenobia Camprubí and Pilar de
Zubiaurre
Iker González-Allende
16. Preserving Memories, Celebrating Lives: War, Motherhood, and
Grief in Scholastique Mukasonga’s La femme aux pieds
nus
Marzia Caporale
List of Contributors
Index
Rangira Béa Gallimore is an associate professor emerita of French at the University of Missouri. She is the coeditor of a book in French on the Rwandan genocide. Gerise Herndon is a professor of English and chair of gender studies at Nebraska Wesleyan University. She is coeditor, with Sarah Barbour, of Emerging Perspectives on Maryse Condé: A Writer of Her Own.
"Art from Trauma: Genocide and Healing beyond Rwanda in very
creative ways examines and explores the subject of trauma, an
experience that could subsume one into oblivion, denial, and death,
but which, thankfully, due to the arts including literature, can
help to pull the survivors out of this dark place."—Journal of
Folklore Research Reviews
“I recommend that everyone read this fascinating book. In
remembering professor Chantal Kalisa, the contributors of Art from
Trauma bring hope for the future to victims coping with traumatic
experiences of extreme violence or genocide. Providing victims
a platform for sharing memories and experiences is one way of
mourning and may lead to healing.”—Edouard Kayihura, author of
Inside the Hotel Rwanda: The Surprising True Story and Why It
Matters Today
“This astute biographical, methodological, and theoretical book
presents Chantal Kalisa as a figure both of history and of
memory—of history in relating her life to her career in order to
highlight compelling narratives on scholarship, activism, and
responsibility; and of memory in extending her powerful
interpretive works into other forays. . . . The hatred and violence
that Kalisa observed in francophone Africa is replaced in this
significant book with hope, along with the enduring capacity to
reimagine a better future.”—Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger
Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at
Austin
“Art from Trauma is an expansive narrative about violence and
trauma as well as a courageous and insightful inquiry into various
forms of traumatic events and the healing power of different forms
of art. Featuring scholars from various and multidisciplinary
perspectives, it is also a work of memory and mourning that
challenges the unspeakable through the power of language and art in
the aftermath of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in
Rwanda.”—Aimable Twagilimana, professor of English and Fulbright
Scholar, SUNY Buffalo State
“A deeply rich and inspiring volume, this book offers a worthy
tribute to Chantal Kalisa’s important work and responds to the
pressing need for creativity in the processes of remembrance,
justice, and reconciliation in Rwanda and beyond.”—Catherine
Gilbert, author of From Surviving to Living: Voice, Trauma, and
Witness in Rwandan Women’s Writing
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