AustLit

'The act of writing from lived experience as a trauma survivor involves making choices beyond the literary and political decisions a writer ordinarily makes. It carries added risks and can have emotional, psychological and practical consequences for the writer. This is particularly so for survivors from racialised communities. In writing my memoir The Mother Wound, which is about losing my mum in an act of domestic violence perpetrated by my father in 2015, it felt important that I tell my story in a nuanced way, resisting self-tokenisation, stereotypes, and sensationalism. There were considerations around mitigating harm without compromising truth, contextualising personal struggles within political realities, and understanding where my work sat within broader conversations about gender-based violence, #metoo and domestic abuse in Australia. Understanding the effects of trauma and building a trauma-informed approach into my writing practice has allowed me to navigate some of these risks and foster a writing practice that facilitates personal healing despite the risk of re-traumatisation.' (Introduction)