The Trauma Mantras: A Memoir in Prose Poems

by Adrie Kusserow

The Trauma Mantras is a memoir by medical anthropologist, teacher, and writer Adrie Kusserow, who has worked with refugees and humanitarian projects in Bhutan, Nepal, India, Uganda, South Sudan, and the United States. It is a memoir of witness and humility and, ultimately, a way to critique and gain a fresh perspective on Western approaches to the self, suffering, and healing. Kusserow interrogates the way American culture prizes a psychologized individualism, the supposed fragility of the self. In relentlessly questioning the Western tribe of individualism with a hunger to bust out of such narrow confines, she hints at the importance of widening the American self. As she delves into humanity’s numerous social and political ills, she does not let herself off the hook, reflecting rigorously on her own position and commitments. Kusserow travels the world in these poetic meditations, exploring the desperate fictions that “East” and “West” still cling to about each other, the stories we tell about ourselves and obsessively weave from the dominant cultural meanings that surround us.

176 pages, Paperback

Published January 9, 2024

Reviews

[Arthur · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Trauma Mantras by Adrie Kusserow- Review by Arthur Turfa
The memoir spans several continents and disciplines. It is a poignant and tender look at refugees, and considers non-Western perspectives With war raging once again in the Mideast, the timing is all the more important.
By way of confession, this reviewer is baffled by prose poetry as a genre. Prose can be poetic, and Faulkner did say he was a failed poet who eventually turned to novels. And the prose her is poetic at times, and more like a journalist’s reporting at other times. No criticism is implied; the memoir touches on contemporary issues that deserve wide circulation.
Prose poetry is the mugwump of literature. Some writers sit on the fence between poetry and prose, and can not decide which to write.

[Berslon Pank · Rating 1 out of 5]

It felt like an overwrought mess.