The Refugees

Trauma is the cumulative, negative impact and long-term effects of life-altering incidents. Trauma can stem from single episodes, large-scale events, disasters such as war, famine, and natural disasters, or continual circumstances such as ongoing abusive situations. The effects of trauma are exhibited in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which generally includes “intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in physical and emotional reactions,” though symptoms can vary (“Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.” Mayo Clinic). Most of these symptoms are exhibited by the narrator of “Black-Eyed Women,” who seeks to bury the intrusive memories of her brother’s face as she watched him die. She becomes a recluse after coming to America and avoids sunlight because it triggers memories of her rape.

According to Nguyen in various publications, the Vietnam War and its aftermath never truly ended. In The Refugees, this is shown by characters who are unable to move beyond the traumatic events they experienced in the war or as boat people. When the narrator’s mother in “War Years” apologizes to Mrs. Hoa for the loss of her son, Mrs. Hoa replies “Who­ev­er said my hus­band was dead? No one saw him die. No one saw my youngest son die, ei­ther. They’re alive, and no one like you is go­ing to tell me oth­er­wise” (55). When the narrator sees Mrs. Hoa up close, without her makeup and eccentric clothing, it is evident that her appearance is carefully constructed to hide the signs of aging that mark her body, just as her behavior masks the trauma that haunts her beneath the surface. Even Carver, the American veteran protagonist of “The Americans,” exhibits some potential signs of PTSD, shown in the nightmares that haunt him upon returning to Vietnam and his inability or unwillingness to articulate his feelings about his experience in the war. His trauma may have kept him from developing a close relationship with his daughter, Claire.

Trauma theory is a psychoanalytic branch of literary studies that explores, among other things, the ways that trauma impacts a person’s ability to form a cohesive narrative of self. Mrs. Hoa, Carver, and the narrator of “Black-Eyed women” are all unable to adequately frame their narratives of the war and its aftermath. Again, “Black-Eyed Women” is the best example of this: the ghost of the narrator’s brother informs her, “‘You died too,’ he said. ‘You just don’t know it’” (“Black-Eyed Women” 23). This state of “living death,” emphasized by the narrator’s almost-vampiric habit of avoiding the daylight, shows that her narrative froze the day her brother was murdered by the man who raped her. This encounter with her brother’s ghost, coupled with her work unpacking Victor Devito’s traumatic biography, gives her the capacity to write ghost stories under her own name. This is closely aligned with Narrative Exposure Therapy, a treatment for trauma and PTSD which “has been most frequently used in community settings and with individuals who experienced trauma as a result of political, cultural or social forces (such as refugees)” and “helps individuals establish a coherent life narrative in which to contextualize traumatic experiences” (“Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET).” American Psychological Association, 31 Jul. 2017). Getting to reconcile with her brother brings the narrator the closure that is denied to most people haunted by PTSD. By finally being able to reframe her narrative and accept the fact that she was a victim, she recounts that she cries for her brother and “all those other girls who had vanished and never come back, including myself” (“Black-Eyed Women” 24). Acknowledging the trauma she incurred on that day and sharing her story is the first step toward healing from it.