KPFA Radio, 94.1FM, 7/31/23
Joining me was author Elizabeth Rosner, discussing her book, Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, where she looks at how descendants of atrocities cope with inherited trauma.
As the child of parents who survived the Holocaust, Elizabeth explores the collective memory of the murder of 6 million Jews, the genocide in Rwanda, and the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She stresses the vital importance of telling stories as a part of the medicine needed to understand and heal from these historic events, as well as from the racism, terrorism, and anti-Semitic traumas that people are experiencing in current time.
Guest
Elizabeth Rosner is an author, teacher, and lecturer whose work focuses on the redemptive power of storytelling and deep listening. Her books have been translated into ten languages and have received several literary prizes in the US and abroad. Her most recent book of creative nonfiction, Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, explores the intergenerational aftermath of atrocities while offering hard-won hope for individual as well as collective resilience. Raised in upstate New York as the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Elizabeth’s writing interweaves personal reflection with scholarly research, revealing the profoundly resonant impacts of the past upon the present. She leads writing workshops locally in Berkeley as well as internationally; her teaching carries forward a message of perseverance and tenacious optimism.
More about all of her work can be found on her website: www.elizabethrosner.com.
