“Yes, and what about this numbness, which I conceal from others? Is it a trait? Is inherited trauma like the water passed from one generation to another, placed in the hands of each person in turn?”

This is it. This is the line that solidified the meaning of the text for me. When reading Kapil’s poem, I was a bit confused as to what it was about. There were mentions of her relatives and her mother, mentions of trauma and generations, however it wasn’t until these specific lines when the purpose- the meaning- of the poem hit me: generational trauma. Generational trauma is a horrible thing, something that no one should have to experience or bear such burden. The poets mention how her mother “was still traumatized by these experiences,” and how she viewed the world had impacted her (poet), casting a “spell” on her. When one experiences trauma, it has a strong impact on the person– it reshapes their whole world. It causes them great pain, and that pain can be projected onto those around them; it even passes down generations. My parents and their parents have lived through war. First it was WWII, my maternal grandfather lost his hand to a discarded defective grenade in the nearby mountains in Dinosh, Podgorica, Montenegro. Germans had abandoned them there. Then there was the civil war and the collapse of Yugoslavia. My mother was forced to learn to load and fire a rifle when she was 10, my uncle when he was 5. My great aunt was held in a concentration camp the Serbians built, and left it broken and physically disabled. They all bear trauma caused by a collapsed socialist country, one that no longer exists and yet has caused great trauma. They tell us these stories, they project their pain onto us in the form of lessons: what to “avoid,” what is “bad,” and who is “bad.” They despise Serbians; they despise socialists, comparing them to communists; they despise politics, blaming them for the pain and suffering millions have endured. Kapil touches on this, mentioning how “my mother wept, telling this story to my son in a Mexican restaurant on Eisenhower Avenue. It was my mistake. He was writing a paper on colonization. I said: “Ask your grandmother. She’s sitting right in front of you. She
lived…” Through these things.” Whether directly or indirectly done, trauma is passed down from one generation to another. In this case, it’s the grandmother telling her grandson what she experienced for the sake of his paper. In other cases, like my own, it’s so we can hopefully avoid what previous generations have experienced. It sparks a fear in us, it shapes our world the way it reshaped theirs, it causes us to form prejudice of any degree. This can continue, whether intentional or not– consciously done or not– we may end up repeating this molding, this reshaping of worlds: trauma passed down from generation to generation.