Coping with Transgenerational Trauma in Tommy Orange‘s There There

Abstract

This thesis explores the enduring impact of transgenerational trauma on Native Americans as portrayed in Tommy Orange’s novel There There, with a focus on the coping strategies characters employ to confront and heal from inherited grief. The study problematizes the long-term psychological and cultural consequences of colonial violence and displacement, particularly how trauma is transmitted across generations and manifests in urban Indigenous life. The central argument of this research is that storytelling, cultural gatherings such as the Big Oakland Powwow, and acts of personal resilience serve not only as coping mechanisms but also as tools for reclaiming identity and resisting cultural erasure. This paper employs a qualitative approach based primarily on textual analysis of Orange’s There There. For this work, different scholars’ insights and views are discussed. The informations are collected from secondary sources like books, journals, articles and electronic resources. The theoretical parameters used in this analysis are grounded in Dominik Lacapra’s concept of ‗Acting Out‘ and ‗Working Through‘ and Jeffrey C Alaxender’s concept of ‗Cultural Trauma‘. This paper demonstrates that while trauma persists across generations, healing is possible through acts of resilience, resistance, and the reclamation of identity. This study contributes to broader discussions on the intersections of trauma, identity, and resistance, offering valuable insights into the role of cultural practices in coping mechanisms with historical and inherited grief. Keywords: transgenerational trauma, coping mechanism, cultural trauma, cultural dislocation, resilience, post-traumatic stress disorder