“A thoughtful, probing meditation on the fragility of memory and the indelible inheritance of pain.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
Award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist Elizabeth Rosner explores intergenerational trauma and memory in her critically acclaimed new book Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory. As survivors of many of the twentieth century’s most monumental events—the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Killing Fields—begin to pass away, Survivor Café addresses urgent questions: How do we carry those stories forward? How do we collectively ensure that the horrors of the past are not forgotten?
The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner 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 inheritance of trauma, as well as the intricacies of remembrance in the aftermath of atrocity.
“Mixing the personal with the historical and the literary with the scholarly, Rosner achieves a breathtaking overview of events as varied as the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, and Japanese American internment. Her impressive, highly readable Survivor Café 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
Book Signing
A book signing will follow the lecture. A selection of backlist titles and the author’s current book will be available for sale from Classic Lines.
Sponsor
Jewish Healthcare Foundation
Presenting Partners
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
