Towards a Poetics of Trauma and Healing: Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (2015) and Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk (2014)

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that contemporary tales of trauma and healing, such as Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life (2015) or Helen Macdonald’s memoir H Is for Hawk (2014), model aesthetic structures akin to narrative therapy approaches used in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Their readers are asked to imaginatively partake in and to distance themselves from these narratives at the same time. This complex reading process parallels elements of a therapeutic conversation. Interpreting the aforementioned texts is certainly not identical with trauma therapy as such, but there are relevant points of encounter. The aim of this paper is to retrace the intersections between exemplary narrative texts and central premises of trauma therapy by looking at structural similarities.