“You have to survive”: Reading trauma, survival, and adolescent resilience in N.H. Senzai’s contemporary young adult war narrative, Escape from Aleppo

ABSTRACT

In recent years, millions of Syrians – one-third of them under the age of 18 – have sought refuge in neighbouring and far-off regions. This article explores the representations of the impact of trauma on young people and their prospects for healing in N.H. Senzai’s 2018 young adult novel, Escape from Aleppo. Recent scholarship on decolonizing trauma studies urges approaches that incorporate aspects of recuperation and resilience, focusing on the possibility of post-traumatic growth and healing. Situated at the intersection of trauma studies and young adult literature, this article examines the post-traumatic growth of Senzai’s young protagonist through negotiations with history that foster resilience and help Syrians to cope with distress. Representing survival through the conventions of the young adult genre, the novel balances two extremes – suffering and hopefulness – and provides an alternative response to trauma that highlights emotional growth through localized systems of knowledge available to young survivors.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• trauma
• young adult fiction
• Syrian war
• migration
• N.H. Senzai

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by Newton-Bhabha PhD Placement Programme 2020–2021, grant file no. ICSSR-BC (UK)/NBF/Ph D-01/2020-IC, under the UK-India Partnership. The grant is funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and delivered by the British Council. This research is a joint collaboration between the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India and the University of Northampton, UK. As such, the research for this article has been conducted at both the institutions proportionately.

Notes on contributors

Arya Priyadarshini

Arya Priyadarshini holds a PhD in English from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India. She is a recipient of the academic research grant under the Newton-Bhabha PhD Placement Programme 2020–21. Her research explores the intersection of trauma and YA fiction from non-western countries.

Sonya Andermahr

Sonya Andermahr is a reader in English at the University of Northampton, UK. She has written widely on contemporary women’s writing in English with a special interest in trauma narratives. Her most recent publication is “‘All My Life is Built on Memories’: Trauma, Diasporic Mourning and Maternal Loss in Roma Tearne’s Brixton Beach”, an open access article in #WeToo, the special issue of Women: A Cultural Review (2023). Other notable publications include Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism (2016), Trauma Narratives and Herstory (with Silvia Pellicer-Ortín; 2013), Angela Carter: New Critical Readings (with Lawrence Phillips; 2012), and Jeanette Winterson (2009). She has also edited a special issue on Brigid Brophy for Contemporary Women’s Writing (2018) and is currently working on a book on the representation of class in women’s writing.

Suman Sigroha

Suman Sigroha is a researcher and associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India. She works on psychosocial concepts such as stereotyping, implicit bias, memory, and representation. She has published in various national and international journals and presented at various forums. She has recently contributed to and co-edited Translational Research and Applied Psychology in India (SAGE, 2019).