Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation

by Claire Sicherman

Imprint is a profound and courageous exploration of trauma, family, and the importance of breaking silence and telling stories. This book is a fresh and startling combination of history and personal revelation.

When her son almost died at birth and her grandmother passed away, something inside of Claire Sicherman snapped. Her body, which had always felt weighed down by unknown hurt, suddenly suffered from chronic health conditions, and her heart felt cleaved in two. Her grief was so large it seemed to encompass more than her own lifetime, and she became determined to find out why.

Sicherman grew up reading Anne Frank and watching Schindler's List with almost no knowledge of the Holocaust's impact on her specific family. Though most of her ancestors were murdered in the Holocaust, Sicherman's grandparents didn't talk about their trauma and her mother grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia completely unaware she was even Jewish. Now a mother herself, Sicherman uses vignettes, epistolary style, and other unconventional forms to explore the intergenerational transmission of trauma, about the fact that genes can be altered and carry memories, which are then passed down--a genetic imprinting.



With astounding grace and strength, Sicherman weaves together a story that not only honours her ancestors but offers the truth to the next generation and her now nine-year-old son. A testimony of the connections between mind and body, the past and the present, Imprint is devastatingly beautiful--ultimately a story of love and survival.

Genres: Jewish

224 pages, Paperback

Published January 10, 2018

Reviews

[Kim Barke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the structure and writing style of this memoir. It’s hybrid comprised of letters, short personal essays, and journal entries. Not all the dots were connected for me, but it didn’t matter too much. I saw this as a recording of her discovery of the depths of her inner life and the way her body reacted to stress and trauma. Quick read but lots to think about.

[Sarah Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Claire Sicherman knew that most of her ancestors -- her great-grandparents, her great-aunts and great-uncles, her cousins -- had been killed in the Holocaust. She knew that her grandparents, her babi and deda, had only barely survived. She knew that her grandfather’s leap from a high apartment building window, later, in Canada, had been a leap from despair and a spiraling depression. She knew her grandmother had persisted in spite of it all.

What she did not understand was the ways in which those generational traumas lived in her own body. When her baby son, Ben, nearly asphyxiated during labor, the anger and grief of Sicherman’s ancestors woke in her, compelling her to confront them, to seek their stories, and, ultimately, to pursue a healing that she could translate for herself and for Ben as he grew older.

In interwoven lists, letters to Ben, journal entries, memoir and story, Sicherman examines and then interrogates her family history and her own experience in that sharp and beautiful way that only writers who work in the spaces between genre can do. At one point, Ben, now nine, asks, “Is your book about me?” and Sicherman answers unequivocally, “Yes.” As readers, we smile: of course this book is not just about Ben; it is about Sicherman’s ancestors, about Sicherman herself, about generational trauma, about the lingering ghosts of the specific event of the Holocaust, about how important it is that we do not forget. But then we consider Ben’s question again, and we understand. This book has always been about Ben, about how this generational trauma will continue in his body, in his experience. Above all, Sicherman’s book bears witness to that inheritance -- and to the possibilities for healing.

[Quennec Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Claire Sicherman’s Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation is an incredibly important book for our time. With lyrical, evocative prose, Sicherman transports us into the world of a reflective and beautiful soul, one of a lineage of survivors. As efforts to heal from intergenerational trauma unfold through letters to her son, research into family history, visits to healers, artistic explorations, and her own living relationships, we are haunted by an internal knowing that this must never happen again. It is only through remembering the atrocities of the past, and its impact on our children, and their children, that we come to terms with all potentials of our humanity, and how we must touch one another not with aggression, but in more skillful, more beautiful ways. Imprint takes us deep into the viscera of our human souls and returns us with hope for redemption. It reminds us of the power of rewriting our own narratives so that we may move forward with our unique and important contributions to this world.

[Jeannie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been fascinated by learning about the Holocaust since I was a teen and read Anne Frank's Diary, and then Miep Gies' Anne Frank Remembered. Over the years I read so many more books about it, but realized I would never understand it, but would continue to be haunted by the evil of humanity and on the other hand amazed by many Jews' resilience. My family tree is half German, and the war always brings me questions. Before Imprint, I had never really considered intergenerational trauma, but how that operates is really brought to life in this book, which looks at 5 generations, including (in Sicherman's case) the surviving generation, who lived to have families, but just as importantly our own generation and the legacy of our children. This book flows as if it's words came out easily and yet it's clear there was nothing easy in confronting the cycle of trauma. Brilliantly written.

[Rebecca Gross · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful book about shedding trauma most of us don't acknowledge we have. In an introspective and interdisciplinary way, Sicherman weaves together her own experience with those of her ancestors.

[Yolande · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and powerful. I adore this book. Poetic prose and such a creative, effective way of presenting the story through letters, lists, and narrative.

[madeleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important and striking. Sicherman's voice is powerful and poignant, transporting and grounding the reader in a way that awakens the spirit.

[Kenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't care for the book format but it was still an interesting read.