4 - Performing ‘Self-Othering’ in Winter Birds by Jim Grimsley (1994)

Summary

Chapter 4 concentrates on a trauma narrative, Winter Birds (1994) by Jim Grimsley, relating the childhood of a young child named Daniel Crell in a household marked by violence, alcoholism and sexual abuse on the part of a maimed father. The testimony of the protagonist (who is also the narrator) is carried out by the second-person pronoun that, combined with other linguistic elements, serves as a coping mechanism throughout the narration. Drawing from socio-cognitive theories and cognitive stylistics (and in particular Text World Theory), it shows how Grimsley’s narrative does not confine itself to inform us about the author’s own traumatic experience through Dan but makes readers enact it through an embodied style performing the character’s vulnerability rather than describing it.