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Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir by Jennifer Sinor (review)

Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir by Jennifer Sinor (review) Jennifer Sinor, Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2017. 279 pp. Paper, $19.95. In a Texas hospital, a young Vietnam veteran was told to choose between the lives of his wife and baby. One would have to be sacri- fi ced to save the other. He chose to save his wife. Th e baby’s body was disposed of in a bucket after being extracted from the mother, a procedure expected to kill the infant. However, a doctor noticed the baby breathing, and Jennifer Sinor was saved. Hawaii was the place where Sinor’s conscious memory appears to have formed. Sinor’s father, after graduating from law school at the University of Nebraska, was stationed at Pearl Harbor as a na- val attorney. Although there were no visible physical scars from her near- death experience at birth, even as a three- year- old she was at least “dimly aware that the oily black water  .  .  . concealed an un- known number of bodies and sunken ships” from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a historic national trauma (8). Th ere was Hawaii’s vi- brant beauty, while the family’s backyard off ered both a tire swing and a http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Western American Literature University of Nebraska Press

Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir by Jennifer Sinor (review)

Western American Literature , Volume 53 (1) – Jun 1, 2018

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
ISSN
0043-3462

Abstract

Jennifer Sinor, Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir. Salt Lake City: U of Utah P, 2017. 279 pp. Paper, $19.95. In a Texas hospital, a young Vietnam veteran was told to choose between the lives of his wife and baby. One would have to be sacri- fi ced to save the other. He chose to save his wife. Th e baby’s body was disposed of in a bucket after being extracted from the mother, a procedure expected to kill the infant. However, a doctor noticed the baby breathing, and Jennifer Sinor was saved. Hawaii was the place where Sinor’s conscious memory appears to have formed. Sinor’s father, after graduating from law school at the University of Nebraska, was stationed at Pearl Harbor as a na- val attorney. Although there were no visible physical scars from her near- death experience at birth, even as a three- year- old she was at least “dimly aware that the oily black water  .  .  . concealed an un- known number of bodies and sunken ships” from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a historic national trauma (8). Th ere was Hawaii’s vi- brant beauty, while the family’s backyard off ered both a tire swing and a

Journal

Western American LiteratureUniversity of Nebraska Press

Published: Jun 1, 2018

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