9 October 2014

Guest post: 'Your Grandmother's Middle Name was Rose'

CSEL friend and colleague Jennifer Verson of Migrant Artists Mutual Aid writes below on the impact attending a CSEL session on psychology and memory had on her work as an artist...


In September this year, the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University and the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance, Open University hosted an international conference: Migrant mothers caring for the future: creative interventions in making new citizens. The conference was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, welcoming over 70 delegates and attendees from around the world with two days of papers, panels, keynote speeches and performances.

As a migrant mother artist whose work addresses issues of citizenship and belonging, I was invited to participate in the conference.  I took the opportunity to develop a new autobiographical one-woman performance that explores the intersections between cultural transmission and trauma.

In December 2013 I attended CSEL Evidence into Practice training events for the voluntary sector as part of my role as a member of Migrant Artists Mutual Aid.  

The training ushered in a period of deep reflection on how I share memories with my daughter.  
Almost a year later, the conference afforded me the opportunity to enter the public domain with an exploration of how trauma affects cultural transmission, and to ‘perform’ some of the adaptive strategies I use to help my daughter understand her identity.

All migrants tell stories about their country of origin and their families of origin.  In professional and social settings we are often asked to ‘tell our stories’.  Every migrant must develop coping strategies to tell these stories, especially when the assumption is that these should be happy stories, and the teller is not expected to recount traumatic memory.

‘Your Grandmother’s Middle Name was Rose’ exposed these tensions and performatively explored their intersection with the dual representational theory of posttraumatic stress disorder that was discussed in CSEL’s dissemination workshop.  

The 45-minute performance was a fragmented journey of songs, stories and prayers interspersed with poetry, video and educational explanations of the Dual Representational Theory of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.  The result was a bittersweet demonstration through song of how public narratives are used to replace personal narratives and memories when these personal narratives are ‘irretrievable’.

As an activist working with women seeking asylum, daily I bear witness to the implementation of Theresa May’s pledge to 'reduce net migration' and its effects on women and mothers seeking sanctuary who are survivors of female genital mutilation, rape, trafficking and other forms of domestic and sexual violence.  The disappearance from public discourse of narratives that are simply too difficult affects our society in a systemic and dangerous way.  Externalised,  it enables negative credibility decisions for survivors of gender-based violence in the asylum system, as well as their social alienation.   The internalisation of this disappearance is what I explore through live performance


‘Your Grandmother’s Middle Name was Rose’ was a symphonic journey through the mal/adaptive strategies used to tell difficult stories and transmit culture. Through this journey, I was able to bear witness to the reality that millions of stories are erased from public discourse by migrant mothers struggling with the effect that trauma has had on their autobiographical memory.

The views expressed in this guest post are the author's own. CSEL is not a campaigning organisation and does not carry out campaigning or lobbying activities.