BY KAREN BOSSICK
“Ghost sickness,” or intergenerational trauma, will be dissected on Friday by the director of the Anti-Racism Collective at Boise State University.
Dora Ramirez, professor of Ethnic Studies at BSU, will discuss “Unsaid, but Understood: Listening and Silence in ‘Sabrina & Corina’ at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10.
The discussion is being held in conjunction with this year’s Winter Read of Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s short story collection named “Sabrina & Corina.” Copies are available at valley libraries. RSVP to watch the program in person at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/10223795
The event will also be livestreamed and recorded to watch later at https://vimeo.com/event/2803210.
The Latinx/Indigenous community’s experiences in the book are often told through silence—what’s left unsaid, according to Ramirez. In the story “Ghost Sickness,” Ana’s mother reminds her that memory doesn’t have to be a story memory—it can be a picture or a feeling.
The story draws out intergenerational trauma by making readers privy to the experiences of two generations struggling to define the community’s historical memory. The older generation carries an incredible burden of pain and disappointment of the racism her community has experienced, including environmental degradation, missing and murdered women and the effects of colonization on the family structure.
The younger generation, meanwhile, has learned to understand what is left unsaid.
The Library had Ramirez craft this talk for the valley’s dive into the Winter Read, said Martha Williams, the library’s programs director.
“Dr. Ramirez has written and taught at BSU on subjects ranging from Latina and Chicana identities in literature to literature for social change,” she said. “Her talk will help us uncover so much, especially around how we learn from each other and through fiction about culture and community. She’s an amazing Idaho thinker and speaker so I’m excited for people to hear from her.”
Ramirez has researched the ideas of nation-building while examining the internalization of socio-political global effects and the influence of colonization among Latinx and Indigenous populations in the United States and along the U.S./Mexico border.
Her book “Medical Fragmentation: Literary Modernism, Scientific Discourse an the Mexican, Indigenous Body, 1870-1940s” analyzes the medical industry’s colonial influences on indigenous peoples at the turn of the 19th century.
She is working on a second book titled “Victim: Another Meaning,” which analyzes the rhetorical uses of the concept “Victim” and seeks to disentangle the varied definitions from the reality of what it means to be a victim in a polarized, racialized society in the current U.S. culture.