Cultural Memory/ Collective Memory as a way of Resistance to Traumatic memory

Abstract

The poem “ The Country of Dreams and Dust”  in the collection of the same name by the Chinese American writer Frank Chin draws the traumatic memory of Chinese Americans and gives a clear account of the collective/ cultural memory as a way of resistance to acculturation and cultural indoctrination. The immigrants’ trauma in Russell Leong’s poem takes various forms of remembering and commemorating, most of which focus on the immigration experience. The process of indoctrination including religious conversion presents one of the dynamics of the traumatic memory of the speakers. So, cultural memory continues to exist because it feeds a basic need for identity, salvation, hope and resistance to annihilation. The cultural memory of Buddha exists because there is a need for it whereby the speakers speak and continue to speak of a shared experience of marginalized people in US. Accordingly, in this paper, I will approach memory in a manner that highlights the power of culture as an organizer of resistance.