Trauma and Repair : Confronting Segregation and Violence in America

Trauma and Repair is an interdisciplinary study of inequality and complex trauma. Annie Stopford’s interview-based exploration of life in four specific low-income neighborhoods captures in sharp relief a complex trauma that has multiple sources, including intergenerational economic distress and repeated exposure to community violence.

Trauma and Repair: Confronting segregation and violence in America is an interview-based interdisciplinary exploration of complex trauma in specific low-income communities and neighborhoods in Baltimore, Oakland, New Orleans and Elaine (Arkansas). The author’s discussion and extensive analysis draws on insights from diverse fields – sociology, public health, history, and legal studies, as well as her own profession of clinical psychoanalysis. Moving fluidly between respondents’ narratives about their lives on one hand and clinical and academic perspectives on trauma and inequality on the other, a picture emerges of multidimensional and intergenerational trauma with multiple sources, including prolonged economic injustice and repeated exposure to community violence. Eminent Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson writes that Stopford’s book provides the most compelling case for acknowledging not only the cumulative economic, social and cultural effects of living in segregated and impoverished neighborhoods, but also the physical and psychological suffering caused by exposure to constant and chronic dangers, including the damaging health consequences of early childhood trauma that can span generations. Written in an accessible and engaging style, with an emphasis on interviewees’ lived experience and insights, this original study promises to be a vital addition to the literature on inequality and poverty in the United States. Trauma and Repair will engage readers in diverse academic disciplines including sociology, psychology, public health, history, and legal studies. Readers in the wider public seeking to better understand the complex toxic forces confronting residents of distressed neighborhoods in American cities and towns will also find this original study informative, accessible and fascinating.