Asian Americans carry with them the legacies of imperialism and colonialism-war, political upheaval, and scarcity of resources have been widespread across Asia through the twentieth century and beyond, which has subsequently driven waves of migration from Asia to the USA (Kim-Prieto et al., 2018 Lowe, 1996).

In her illustrated memoir, Thi Bui describes how though immigrant parents seeking a new life in a new country may avoid discussing the past, their children can still feel its reverberations. Bui ( 2018) (Vietnamese American graphic novelist and illustrator), The Best We Could Doįor many Asian American children of immigrants, their family’s lives before immigration are often a hazy unknown that seems distant and unrelated to their lives in the USA, as far away as the homelands left behind. Finally, we discuss historical trauma among Asian Americans within the framework of radical healing, particularly how intergenerational communication about historical trauma can raise critical consciousness, facilitate ethnic-racial identity development, and reinforce ethnic-racial socialization.Īnd though my parents took us far away from the site of their grief… certain shadows stretched far, casting a gray stillness over our childhood… hinting at a darkness we did not understand but could always FEEL. We also examine the role of intergenerational communication in historical trauma and in Asian American families and communities. In this paper, we consider how historical trauma impacts Asian American individuals, families, and communities. A lack of recognition of these historical traumas within families and communities, as well as in the psychological literature, may mask important pre-migration history effects on Asian American families across generations. Historical trauma related to other major events, such as the India/Pakistan Partition, the Chinese Civil War and Cultural Revolution, the Korean War, and the Sri Lankan Civil War, have not been examined among Asian Americans. Research on historical trauma among Asian Americans has focused primarily on refugees who fled the US wars in Southeast Asia, with some research on Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. For instance, the majority of Asian Americans have immigrated from countries across Asia that have been profoundly affected by war and political upheaval in the past century. The concept has seen limited application to Asian American groups, despite its relevance to their unique and shared lived experiences.

It has been studied in a variety of groups and contexts, notably in Holocaust survivors and their families and in Native American communities. Unlike personal trauma, historical trauma refers to distressing or life-threatening events which members of a group with a shared social identity experience together and pass on to their descendants. Little is known about how Asian American families, as well as other racially marginalized families, communicate about ethnic and racial group histories, particularly regarding historical trauma.

Intergenerational trauma in oscar wao