Introduction

Abstract

How damaging is mental and emotional trauma, particularly when it is intergenerational? Can a family/community that is riven apart by grief and outrage and grief provide a sounding board? Can education be deployed as an effective tool in intergenerational family communication regarding sociocultural trauma? After having written extensively on the political, historical, and sociocultural issues of Jammu and Kashmir, I realized that while it was all very well to delve into these matters of import, how I, as an educator, could encourage students to engage with writings on traumas that young people experience in the volatile and highly charged atmosphere of various conflict zones. Every time I broach the topic of trauma in the classes I teach at institutions of higher education in the United States, I discern how well some students connect with the discussions because of their own agonizing encounters with human-created or natural disasters. My attempt is not to obscure the line between trauma in a non-militarized environment and mourning in a beleaguered and highly militarized one.