Trauma of Sexual Violence. Cross Cultural Approaches towards Coping and Healing

In "Trauma of Sexual Violence," Dr. Luisa T. Schneider combines analytical autoethnography, critical phenomenology, and feminist philosophy to explore cross-cultural approaches to trauma and healing after sexual violence. Drawing on her own experience of rape in Sierra Leone and her subsequent journey towards healing in Europe, and including manifold experiences from all over the world, she compares and contrasts localized coping mechanisms and traces their intricacies with regard to conceptions of personhood, self, body, trauma, coping, healing, and overcoming. In doing so, she challenges existing distinctions between embodied and cognitive notions of trauma, communal and individual coping mechanisms, ideas of bearing pain and living with trauma, and pressures to overcome trauma.
Unconventional and evocative, "Trauma of Sexual Violence" offers a nuanced and account of how those who have experienced trauma navigate their world and why this can differ significantly from theoretical conceptualizations of trauma. The book is intensely personal and intimate, while also asking global questions about what cross-cultural conversations can do to help us cope with harm and support each other. As a result, it pushes the boundaries of what scholarship can achieve.