Abstract
While specifically focused on the impact of trauma on the lives of people of African descent, in ch. 2 Parker sets historical foundations for research more broadly by placing Black experiences of multi-generational trauma in conversation with the well-researched accounts of Armenian, Jewish and Native American genocide, extermination, and removal, suffered at the hands of the Turks, Germans, and Americans, respectively. Following each of the ethnic specific narratives of inhumane treatment, Parker develops a four-component matrix for analysis through which she examines: 1) motivations for abuse; 2) systemic methods for carrying out violence; 3) manifestations of multi-generational trauma; and 4) human responses to unimaginable atrocities, including coping strategies and perspectives of vulnerability/resilience.
In ch. 3, marrying historiography and psychology, Parker focuses on particularities of the African slave trade and the horrific experiences of those enslaved. Using autobiographies of enslaved Africans and interviews of the formerly enslaved, Parker paints devastatingly descriptive pictures of psychological costs of slavocracy and racialized society. In what can only be termed soul murder (a term coined by psychiatrist Leonard Shengold and appropriated by historian Nell Painter in her book entitled Sojourner Truth [W. W. Norton, 1996]), Parker writes, “The trauma of the enslaved Africans caused them to have an inner life of repeated fear and terror, death anxiety, psychic numbing, disconnection, and isolation. The shock, misery, and abuse of chattel slavery precipitated an interior existence of enduring horror, emotional paralysis, and disassociation” (p. 50). Parker dispenses with the analytical framework of the previous chapter, summarizing, instead, the expanses of trauma with greater detail. Using fourteen types of trauma delineated by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network, Parker notes, “a minimum of eight trauma types can be correlated to each of the eight trauma events in the Africans’ journey from their homes to the plantations in the Americas. All of the trauma events: capture, forced march from the interior of the continent, the slave castles, the Middle Passage, auction, plantation life, breeding, and terrorism, could happen to one African in twelve months” (p. 45). Correlatively, Africans were subjected to trauma types inclusive of sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse and psychological maltreatment, neglect, forced displacement, and system induced violence. Parker provides a somewhat cathartic end to ch. 3, by suggesting that enslaved Africans forged a trauma-informed theology founded on resilience and resistance.
In ch. 4, Parker avoids an oversimplified understanding of resilience and resistance by incorporating more complex trauma-informed theology. Integrating the perspectives of four theologians (Matthew V. Johnson, Flora Keshgegian, Shelly Rambo, and Dominic Robinson) related to preservation of the imago Dei, Parker unearths foundations of a middle territory of trauma theology. Core to this theology are: 1) belief in the divine destiny of survival and liberation accomplished by saving family and self through reconnection; 2) belief in a God who translates shouts/moans as the defiant “I AM” declaration to death and “authentic encounter of the human spirit facing the abyss, the horror, the state of nonbeing…”; 3) belief that redemption is found in the lingering residue of trauma as a sustained presence while the “Middle Spirit,” presides over the process; and 4) the practice of communion—as a “memorial meal remembering a traumatic event of suffering, degradation, and death. It gives those who are oppressed and abused an opportunity to bring their suffering and pain to this table knowing that God understands and is with them in their suffering, signaling an end to the way things are (p. 70).
The book contains an added bonus: a six-session course developed by Parker designed to facilitate the valuing of historical accounts of trauma as catalysts for mapping family narratives using genograms. Parker posits that communal experiences of trauma are transmitted multi-generationally. While there may be incremental attempts to address the aftermath of racialized economically motivated trauma through legislative means, in Parker’s view, healing of the soul can only happen through individual, familial, and communal awareness of the generational impact of trauma, of how it presents within family systems contemporarily, and through conscious commitments to culturally sensitive re-membering of coping strategies.
In our present socio-economic climate of radical racial division, ethnic hate, unarticulated anger and angst, overt forced removal of immigrants and invisibilization of indigenous peoples, scholars and ministers need Roots Matter: Healing History, Honoring Heritage, Renewing Hope. The only thing missing from Parker’s discussions of trans-generational trauma is more in-depth analysis of the “motivations for abuse.” Beneficial would have been discussions of how religious rhetoric and claims of national security were employed by political elites to mask underlying interests in stealing/controlling land and exploiting labor. However, even without that level of critique, Paula Owens Parker provides an indispensable resource inviting those engaged in theological education, ministry and those “living with the residue of trauma” to join Katie Cannon’s “dance of redemption” by unearthing sacred texts, memories, and usable truths for communal healing.