/pdf/the-ground-on-which-i-stand-healing-queer-trauma-through-2ta939lp5w.pdf

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma through Performance: Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum

In this essay, I argue that, in a society oversaturated with images and narratives of racial trauma, creating theatre for social change requires more than staging minoritarian bodies with the aim o...

“I know how it is when nobody sees you”: oral-history performance methods for staging trauma

Julie-Ann Scott is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and the Director of The UNCW Storytellers, Hawk Tale Players, and Just Us: Performa...

Embodied Performance as Applied Research, Art and Pedagogy

Language and Power on the Rhetorical Stage

This essay blends creative nonfiction and autoethnography to problematize the anti-choice rhetoric of adoption as a solution to abortion through the lenses of reproductive justice and adoptee lived experience.

Aren’t You Glad You Weren’t Aborted? An Open Letter from an Adoptee

ABSTRACT:This essay is an autoethnographic narrative about what it means for an adoptee to begin to tell their own story and the implications for feminist and humanities scholars working in the field of critical adoption studies. Centering the notion that adoption is built on narratives and the importance of interrogating which narratives are in need of replacing, this essay explores the complexity that exists for adult adoptees who are the products of closed adoption and seeks to create space for healing those wounds by breaking long held silences.

Negotiating Space to Heal: Adult Adoptee Narratives as Autoethnography

We live in a world where conversations about trauma are becoming commonplace and adopted people are using their voices to educate the general public about the effects of maternal separation and genealogical bewilderment. But for many adult adoptees the act of speaking truth to power is still fraught. Personal writing can unlock long held silences and help adult adoptees feel empowered to rewrite their narratives. The need to deconstruct dominant narratives about adoption and its inherent loss and trauma is necessary if we are to reform an institution that has damaged many generations of mothers and children. Because many adoptees do not have access to adoption and trauma competent therapists, writing is an accessible therapeutic modality that can be used to reframe narratives that position adoptees as the object rather than the subject. Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal shares the framework and method of using writing as a practice for adult adoptees, therapists, teachers, and researchers interested in learning how to migrate and heal embodied trauma. It analyzes lived experience and the author’s own writing to develop a methodology for moving toward wholeness by writing and speaking the truth of internal adoptee experiences. 

Liz DeBetta

Papers

Embodied Performance as Applied Research, Art and Pedagogy

Language and Power on the Rhetorical Stage

Aren’t You Glad You Weren’t Aborted? An Open Letter from an Adoptee

Negotiating Space to Heal: Adult Adoptee Narratives as Autoethnography

Adult Adoptees and Writing to Heal