Traumatic Peregrinations
Intergenerational Memory and Migration in Nina Bunjevac’s Fatherland
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6187871 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Anastasia Ulanowicz (0000-0003-2586-8669, University of Florida, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Publication date | 2023-11-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | European Journal of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1991-9336 • E-ISSN: 1991-9336 |
| Publisher | OpenEdition (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.4000/ejas.21099 |
| OpenAlex | W4389508083 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
This essay analyzes images of both movement and immobility in Nina Bunjevac’s Fatherland, a Canadian graphic memoir in which the author/illustrator traces her father’s involvement in a Serbian nationalist terrorist cell. Although, as scholars such as Mihaela Precup have convincingly argued, Bunjevac depicts her father as trapped by historical circumstances he cannot control—and her larger family as “frozen in disbelief, anger, and sadness” (220)—I maintain that such immobility is paradoxically the consequence of constant movement. In the course of her narrative, Bunjevac, while she does not excuse her father’s actions or even depict him sympathetically, nevertheless shows how three generations of wartime displacement and transnational migration traumatized her father and in turn her immediate family. Thus, I maintain that her graphic narrative demonstrates how Astrid Erll’s concept of “travelling memory” might be enlarged to address how traumatic memories follow, and become uncannily reenacted by, migrants and displaced people. Bunjevac’s text is a particularly effective demonstration of this dimension of travelling memory because its very form as a graphic memoir necessarily depends on such elements of fracture, repetition, and difference
Anger · Art · Art history · Excuse · Fatherland · Literature · Memoir · Narrative · Nationalism · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sadness · Sociology · Tragedy (event · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Digital Storytelling and Education · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |