About this item
"Survivor Caf takes on important issues of atrocity, trauma, and memory, rendering them all with such great clarity and intimacy that the reader will not soon forget them, or this powerful book." -- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer As firsthand survivors of many of the twentieth century's most monumental events -- the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, the Killing Fields -- begin to pass away, Survivor Caf addresses urgent questions: How do we carry those stories forward How do we collectively ensure that the horrors of the past are not forgotten Elizabeth Rosner organizes her book around three trips with her father to Buchenwald concentration camp -- in 1983, in 1995, and in 2015 -- each journey an experience in which personal history confronts both commemoration and memorialization. She explores the echoes of similar legacies among descendants of African American slaves, descendants of Cambodian survivors of the Killing Fields, descendants of survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the effects of 9/11 on the general population. Examining current brain research, Rosner depicts the efforts to understand the intergenerational inheritance of trauma, as well as the intricacies of remembrance in the aftermath of atrocity. Survivor Caf becomes a lens for numerous constructs of memory -- from museums and commemorative sites to national reconciliation projects to small-group cross-cultural encounters. Beyond preserving the firsthand testimonies of participants and witnesses, individuals and societies must continually take responsibility for learning the painful lessons of the past in order to offer hope for the future. Survivor Caf offers a clear-eyed sense of the enormity of our twenty-first-century human inheritance -- not only among direct descendants of the Holocaust but also in the shape of our collective responsibility to learn from tragedy, and to keep the ever-changing conversations alive between the past and the present.
About the Author
Elizabeth Rosner is a bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist living in Berkeley, California. This September, her stunning work of nonfiction will be published: SURVIVOR CAFE: the Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. Her most recent novel, ELECTRIC CITY, was named one of the best books of 2014 by National Public Radio. Her highly praised autobiographical poetry collection, GRAVITY, was published by Atelier26 Books in Fall 2014. THE SPEED OF LIGHT, her debut novel of 2001, was translated into nine languages, and won several literary prizes in both the US and Europe, including the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, the Prix France Bleu Gironde, and the Great Lakes Colleges Award in Fiction. It was short-listed for the prestigious Prix Femina in 2002, and picked as the "One City One Book" choice of Peoria, IL that same year. BLUE NUDE, her second novel, was named among the best books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle.
Rosner's essays have appeared in the NY Times Magazine, Elle, Hadassah Magazine, the Huffington Post, and numerous anthologies. She frequently writes book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle. Having taught writing for over 30 years, she travels widely to lead intensive writing workshops, to lecture on contemporary literature, and to visit with book groups.
