Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World by Serene Jones (review)

202 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE rejection of traditional and exclusivist forms of Christianity. (I remain uneasy with Viramontes' assertion that we cannot continue to wait for redemption-an idea at odds with the teaching that our redemption has already occurred through the cross and the resurrection.) Yether interest is not in proving her writers' orthodoxy, but in showing how Latina/o communities have been searching for new ways to understand the role of faith in their lives: These would be good texts for graduate courses; they deserve greater attention. J. Stephen Pearson University of Tennessee-Knoxville Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. BySerene Jones. Westminster John Knox, 2009. ISBN:978-0664234102. Pp. xv, 175. Paper. $24.95. This volume is a handy introduction into the choppy waters of recent work on trauma and grief, as well as a thoughtful, sympathetic, and at times rather brilliant analysis of biblical thinking with regard to how one might deal with traumatized individuals. As in many ways a book of pastoral theology, it may seem to sail well beyond what is typically reviewed in the pages of Christianity and Literature. However, we are living in a post -9/11 culture in which trauma and grief studies have enjoyed both Widespread general interest as well as provided some pretty interesting theoretical insights for scholars in the humanities. English departments now regularly support full-blown dissertation research featuring these topics as a major component, and my recent participation in our departmental search for an assistant professor in contemporary American literature provided access to scores of worthy dissertation projects studying these areas. Trauma and grief appear to be major areas of scholarship among today's impressive cohort of Americanists. These dissertations, not surprisingly, are taking their cues from the burgeoning, cutting-edge work being carried out throughout the humanities, including literary studies. Many professional conferences today host panels on grief and trauma. Numerous, prominent scholarly titles have accumulated recently and are being cited in literary criticism, a list that would include such works as Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman, Cathy Caruth's edited volume Trauma: Explorations in Memory, Caruth's monograph Unclaimed Experience, the collection Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity edited by Jeffreyc. Alexander et al., Dominick LaCapra's Writing History, Writing Trauma, and many others. In effect, grief and trauma studies are growth industries in the humanities, including in literary studies. To this list of useful and provocative titles, we can now add Serene Jones' interesting volume, which comes at the topic from a deeply theistic and graceinformed perspective. For Christian theorists, it is essential that we push these BOOK REVIEWS 203 issues even further, and here is a fine place to begin. As one critic has recently claimed, the problems of pain, grief, and trauma are the quintessential apologetical problems of our generation. In fact, this apologetical problem is precisely how Jones frames her argument in the book's opening pages: she states her conviction that the book is formed out of "two deeply interrelated faith claims ... we live in a world profoundly broken by violence and ... God loves this world and desires that suffering be met by hope, love, and grace" (ix). As such, Jones' work is presented in the form of theodicy: she wants to ask how traumatized people can know God's redeeming power and grace, and she wants to know what words we can possibly say to victims when they face the unthinkable violence of a broken human world. Asone of the most influential theorists, Cathy Caruth, has put it: "trauma seems to be much more than a pathology, or the simple illness of a wounded psyche: it is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available" (Unclaimed Experience 4). The story of a wound: I like that formulation. Jones gives us much to think about in this regard: her foray into these waters as a trained theologian and a pastoral minister over many years is thus both timely and reasoned. She begins with some stories about traumatized individuals with whom she has dealt in ministry situations over the...