ABSTRACT
This entry explores trauma literature of the Americas and develops an understanding of “inter-American” forms of the genre. The latter term invokes literature from the (north and south) Americas representing collective and often trans-continental forms of trauma, whether through fictional representation or through autobiography and testimonio and other forms of “life writing” (→ III/11), as well as literature that depicts the relationship between North, Central, and South America as key to the production of trans-American trauma. The entry primarily explores Latin American and U.S. Latinx literature as case studies for understanding the various ways in which trauma is represented in literary texts, and the ways in which these representations figuratively cross national boundaries to be “trans-American.”
