Vivian and Jane are able to laugh at the ways in which they’ve been disenfranchised by the system they work in as black women-they share anecdotes about complicated and challenging family dynamics, and trade stories about everyday abuses, racism, and misogyny. Vivian deals with her high stress job by maintaining a healthy sense of humor and relying on her closest friend from law school, Jane, an academic and fellow survivor of childhood abuse. Vivian has a special relationship with her clients-as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse herself, she understands exactly how the system treats black and brown girls in need of help. The novel begins with Vivian, a Black/Latina established legal advocate lawyer living in New York City, who seeks to free her victimized and mentally ill clients from the cycle of hospitalization and incarceration. Post-Traumatic seeks to prove Sehgal wrong by structuring its narrative around the lingering effects of childhood sexual abuse. The trauma plot entered the literary vernacular recently with literary critic Parul Sehgal’s piece, The Case Against the Trauma Plot, which posits that writers have become overly dependent on using a traumatic backstory to prop up an underdeveloped narrative. Johnson’s debut novel, Post-Traumatic, offers a unique version of of the very en vogue trauma plot.
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