Representation Of Trauma And Trauma Of Representation In Crossroads In Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman

Abstract

Many people's accounts of social traumas like the Holocaust and war are based on secondhand accounts from older generations. Keller, like many other writers of the next generation, has shown empathy for the victim's horrific recollections, making her a secondary witness and a moral witness whose work has sought to bring to light the repressed agony of those who have been hushed for too long. Human rights and women's rights groups joined forces with former "comfort women" to wage a protracted court struggle in an effort to force Japan to admit fault, issue an apology, and compensate victims for wartime abuses. For future generations, the past will be inaudible unless such attempts are made, therefore their importance cannot be overstated. Writers like Keller bring such repressed trauma of their ancestors to the surface, illuminating and warning the future generation about their ancestral history, where their ancestors had walked the painful path of pain and suffering to lead the current generation to the end of the tunnel where there is light. Such accounts reveal human rights abuses in the past, intertwined with social trauma, establishing the validity of trauma accounts as paradigm shifters on many fronts.