Trauma, Ancestry, and Friendship During Graduate Education and Their Aftermaths

This chapter interweaves poetry and narrative to delve into the traumas we carried before entering graduate education as precarious migrant scholars, the ones we accumulated during that time, and those that persist long after we have departed. Trauma is a response to violence that shatters our sense of self, our place in the world, and our understanding of how the world functions. Although trauma ebbs and flows, the stories in this chapter reveal how, when it feels overwhelming, the friendships, ancestries, tools, and experiences we have gathered over time rise to support us and help us survive.