When The World Breaks Open: Threading stories of grief and trauma

Arya Samuelson

What is non-linearity? Linearity is so specific a notion that it feels strange to define entire worlds of texts experimenting with form, organization, chronology, and space on the page by that which they are not. As I continue working on my own (non-linear!) memoir, I find myself inspired and moved by how Seema Reza has threaded together such a gorgeous work.

I see “When The World Breaks Open” as organized into “waves of grief”: her abusive marriage; her writing workshops with veterans and the struggles of carrying their grief alongside her own; her miscarriage and the challenges of being a mother; the death of her father; and her longing for love – or, as she calls it, her “love for longing” (180). But though these themes comprise the focal points of each section, the classification is not as rigid as that. The trajectory is more of an unfolding, revealing not only the novelty of the subject at hand, but reflecting and referring back to its earlier sections.

For example, losing her (unreliable, yet beloved) father leads her to consider her own reliability and the question of her “selfishness” for pursuing writing: “As I sit in a coffee shop writing this, my children are attending soccer games and music practices with their father” (149). In this, Reza invokes both the guilt of divorce, as well as the possibilities that divorce offers for greater wholeness within herself. Selfishness is not a new theme of the book, and so, this simple line harkens back to earlier sections, such as “Saints” (Isn’t the mother required to be a saint?... This is the private truth of mothers and children: we sometimes feel hindered and failed by each other, we sometimes prefer to be apart), and “Prophet” (“When your mother is a prophet...”). This patterning is both a strategy for creating cohesion, as well as a reflection of one of the author’s deepest beliefs. As Reza writes, “The trauma that brought you here will not be the last you face. I can’t promise much, but I can promise you that. Life will keep hitting you” (41). And so, as the novel proceeds “forward” in time, the narrative continually turns back on itself, providing for a deeper understanding of what came before.

The book therefore becomes a kind of dialectic, in conversation with itself and others around its core themes, some of which are loneliness, motherhood, grief, and the question of how to bear – and hold space for - the traumas of others. So many lines hold such depth of meaning because of this. For example, the response to her question, “When did you notice strangers stopped treating you like a cute kid?” (“When I started going places without my mom”) brings to light in a single poignant, gutting moment the interconnectedness of mothers and bodies and war with which Reza has been fiercely wrestling.

“I woke this morning to two things” (55) contains another powerful juxtaposition: an article

about 4 Palestinian boys killed at the beach and “an email from Karim wanting to discuss why our sons punch each other so much.” Because we know about his history of aggression, this short section works on so many levels, invoking not only the disparity of the two worlds, but their parallels. Because we know about Karim’s history of violence, this brief moment made me think about the roots of violence, and how violence is not only systemic but also intensely personal, and how these two levels of socialization – even worlds away from each other – deeply inform each other historically, culturally, and politically.

Often the fragments are themselves a dialectic, such as “While We Sleep,” in which the narrative alternates between an intimate moment of sleeping beside her young son and an account of a boy on the other side of the world killed by a bomb left in a “pile of trash  meant for men in boots” (47). These moments capture Reza’s determination – in her life, as described, and as conveyed by her memoir’s form – to grapple with dualities, to hold dichotomies, rather than succumb to the delusion of choosing either/or. She writes openly, for instance, about her struggles to balance her work with veterans with her commitment to her children. In “Meetings,” Reza is forced to choose between a visiting writer at her work and her son’s play, and instead of choosing, she finds a way to attend both. Rather than celebrate her compromise, Reza’s account makes space for the guilt and failure of her attempt – both in the eyes of the onlooking parents, and in her own heart.

The very title conveys one of the central dichotomies of the book – the world must break open to begin again. Loss and grief and the shattering of everything we think we know creates space for new beauty and opportunities and the (re)learning of our own strength & power.

The fragmentary nature of the memoir also allows for wholeness. Ironic, eh? She opens up so much space for questioning and grappling with the complexity of life that the memoir becomes in a way a conversation between herself and the reader: “I invited you to walk with me through it but I did not always hold your hand. Sometimes I needed you to hold mine.... But here we are. We traveled this story together. Thank you” (230).

Thank you, Seema Reza. I have so much to learn from you.

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Full disclosure: At 10 pm on Sunday night, I realized that I misremembered the blog theme for the week -- I thought it was "form" -- why is why my post contends mainly with structure! But I would argue that, in my view, the form plays a major role in establishing the credibility & reliability of the narrator. The organization of "waves of grief" and the unfolding back onto itself feel true to life -- we are always learning from our past.  The dialectic quality of the narrative also feels honest and authentic to me, because dualities are so often social constructions, whereas life is messy and complex and inexplicable. A question I ask myself all the time is: "How can I hold both/all of these different things?" I believe her as a narrator because she recognizes and allows for ambivalence and ambiguity.