The Wars We Inherit
Wars uses insights from memory and trauma studies show how the violence we live in our homes is linked to the violences that structure our larger culture. I believe that, if we can begin, in our own lives, to transform the destructive ways that we have been shaped by violence, then we might begin to transform the cultural conditions that breed violence.
“By making the figure of the child central to the story of this book, the author charts out a dazzling path showing us how to draw lines of connection between the routine violence of a militarization and the routine if bewildering violence of the home. There is no easy way to describe how the voice of the child left me wounded even as I say how grateful I am for the author’s courage and restraint.” —Veena Das, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Humanities, Johns Hopkins University
ReMembering in transiiton
Re-Membering in Transition: Trajectories of Violence, Structures of Denial, and the Struggle for Meaning in Post-Communist Albania. As a rhetorical analysis of narratives of memory and identity, Re-Membering in Transition draws on theories of collective memory and practices of oral history to understand how the effects of totalitarian repression continue to structure individual, family, and social memory. I analyze these cultural hauntings with two aims: 1) To reflect the stories Albanians have generously offered me back to them in a way that can help them critically understand and hence synthesize and interpret an as-of-yet un-interpreted history; 2) To provide policy makers with a more nuanced understanding of the “deep connections between cultural stories, personal stories” and the structures of identity in Albania (Feldman 2001, 287).
Reviews of The Wars We Inherit
“The Wars We Inherit [is] a groundbreaking addition to the literatures on trauma and gendered violence. Amy makes a unique contribution to the current literature on traumatic memory and survival. She presents her arguments effectively, and her story, clearly and courageously told, is both riveting and painful.”
—Cassie Premo Steele, Pushcart Prize–nominated poet and author of We Heal from Memory
“I have never, ever read anything like Lori E. Amy’s The Wars We Inherit….Although I could put it down after I started it, I found myself reading it again the morning after I first picked it up—at five a.m., when I couldn’t sleep….This is an extraordinary book…it belongs in every public library. Book groups should read it. Even if you don’t agree with what the author is saying, I think you would have to agree that she is trying to be thoughtful and fair while she is saying it.”
—Citizen Reader