History, Memory, and Trauma
History, Memory, and Trauma
Confronting Dominant Interpretations of 9/11 in Alissa Torres’s American Widow and Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers
This chapter explores how bearing witness challenges public narratives of unity, triumph, and heroism by focusing on the works of Art Spiegelman, Alissa Torres, and Sungyoon Choi and their representations of 9/11. More specifically, it highlights the connections between history, memory, and trauma in Torres’s American Widow (with illustrations by Sungyoon Choi) and Spiegelman’s graphic memoir In the Shadow of No Towers. It discusses how Spiegelman, Torres, and Sungyoon Choi use the comics medium to capture the specifics of their lived experiences of 9/11. It also shows how American Widow and In the Shadow of No Towers challenge the dominant verbal and visual narratives that arose in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Keywords: comics, Art Spiegelman, Alissa Torres, Sungyoon Choi, 9/11, history, memory, trauma, American Widow, In the Shadow of No Towers
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