Understanding Others and Otherness Through Early Traumatic Memories

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Looking Back: Narrating and Learning

Abstract

This autoethnography entails writing and thinking about early traumatic memories as an attempt to understand the self and the others. While my first memory of life revolves around trying to understand the un-understandable, trying to make sense of the behaviors of others, another early memory of my life deals with ethnic tension I experienced when we moved to a different neighborhood than the one where I was born and spent the first 4 years of my life. Due to their nebulous nature, they have become translucent memories, as they are neither pure reality nor pure fantasy; yet they generate real implications for defining who I am and how I perceive the concept of otherness.

Author

• Burhanettin Keskin, University of Mississippi