Trafficking in Trauma

Abstract

This chapter examines the pressures of the journalists' job and the traumatic experiences of women, minorities, and journalist–literary figures from historically marginalized groups as well as those who have investigated social problems and/or used journalistic literature to advance social reform causes. More specifically, it considers the role that women's rights, civil rights, and sensationalism have played to push social justice issues. After discussing how journalism, and particularly novel writing, became a pathway for minority writers to produce protest literature, the chapter looks at the emergence of naturalism and sensationalism as tools for journalist–literary figures to cope with traumatic life experiences. It also explores the fictionalization of the conditions of joblessness and economic misery during the Great Depression and concludes with an analysis of how traumatic emotions connected to a journalist's job could come out in themes of fiction.