A Study Of Intergenerational Trauma In Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You is the first novel written by the famous Chinese-American female novelist,Celeste Ng,whose Chinese name is Wu Qishi.The novel won her awards and fame in literary circles.The book was Amazon’s Best Books in 2014 and became the best-seller of New York Times in the same year.The novel tells a series of tragic stories about a Chinese-American family in the 1970 s.The story begins with the death of a daughter in this family,Lydia,and reveals the traumas of all the family members.Based on the theory of intergenerational trauma,this thesis studies how intergenerational trauma is transmitted in Everything I Never Told You.Intergenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects that the trauma experienced by people has on subsequent generations in that group.The novel has received extensive attention from scholars at home and abroad.Most of them have interpreted the novel from the perspectives of gender,race,and narrative strategy.The transmission of intergenerational trauma affects every family member in the novel,and also affects the development of the novel’s plot,but few have analyzed the novel from the perspective of intergenerational trauma.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,this thesis is divided into three chapters.Chapter One mainly analyzes the trauma suffered by the parents,including the racial discrimination suffered by the father,the gender discrimination suffered by the mother,and the varieties of oppression suffered by the couple.Chapter Two mainly analyzes how trauma is transmitted from parents to children.The ways of transmission mainly include the transmission of parents’ unrealized dreams,violence in family education,and the neglect of children’s real needs.Chapter Three focuses on how children face intergenerational trauma.Instead of coping positively with intergenerational trauma,children took a negative attitude,which has deepened the gap between them and their parents.Through suppressing their real desires,relying on others and alienating from their families,children want to escape trauma,but their actions also bring indelible damage to themselves.Conclusion is drawn that the trauma shown in the novel is not only the trauma of the individual,but also the trauma of the family,and the trauma of the specific groups in American society.Due to various factors in the family,trauma is constantly transmitted in this family,which has a tremendous impact on both parents and children.For the transferees,getting rid of the negative effects brought by intergenerational trauma requires not only the efforts of individuals,but also society’s help.