Shared Trauma in The Association of Small Bombs Lily Gross College

The Association of Small Bombs attempts to create an encompassing narrative about the effects of a terrorist attack on its survivors, the families of its victims, and the terrorists themselves. Karan Mahajan writes a story in which a plethora of characters are forced to face mortality, and in doing so, she complicates the boundary between victims and assaulters through their shared experiences of trauma. This book can be understood as a multiplicity of manifestations of trauma through the lived experiences of the Khuranas, Shockie, and Mansoor. It works to show the ways in which trauma is both a cause and effect for violence and questions the role that a neoliberal government plays in cultivating this trauma as it functions through a state of precarity. Ultimately, the experiences of these fictional characters force the reader to understand trauma not only through individual incidents but also through the larger structural powers by which it is maintained. The novel questions the root of trauma and draws similarities from the inflictors and experiencers of pain to reveal a lens in which violence and grief can only be understood through these hegemonic scales, while depicting trauma as a force which hinders the characters’...