Confessions of a Wallflower: An Autobiographical and Theoretical Account of Trauma Recovery and Sibling Suicide

Abstract

This study examines a coming-of-age story relaying a traumatic incident that occurred in the author’s life. The purpose of the study is to answer three research questions pertaining to young adults who have experienced sibling suicide, a topic elided in creative and critical discussions in the Lebanese literary corpus. First, this study illustrates how writing a autobiographical novella can help a young adult process the resulting shock of sibling suicide. Second, the study examines some aspects of constructing or negotiating a home and explores how revisiting trauma in a past home in a autobiographical novella helps create and accept a revisionist post-traumatic one. Finally, the writing-as-research addresses the question of how a young adult can quell his or her doubts and gain enough confidence to write about sibling suicide. Methodologically, these questions are answered through the autobiographical novella itself and through its concomitant thematic analysis that makes reference to readings about women, grief, and home by Roberta Rubenstein, as well as readings about post-traumatic growth by Davis and McKearney, among others. This study finds that autobiographical writing about sibling suicide encourages self-regulation and growth. Second, this research reveals that the notion of a home materializes upon allowing oneself to engage with the memories of a sibling’s suicide, which allows the creation of a space in which one has more agency and power. Finally, the study shows that gaining confidence to write about sibling suicide must come from the traumatized person after the author tries to find meaning in the incident in order to heal.