Chantal V. Johnson’s debut novel, Post-Traumatic, offers a unique version of of the very en vogue trauma plot. 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. Post-Traumatic seeks to prove Sehgal wrong by structuring its narrative around the lingering effects of childhood sexual abuse.
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. 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. 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 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. Johnson writes that, “They felt united together against everyone else, and considered themselves The Only People Talking About Rape, the Only People Brave Enough to Mention Rape Indiscriminately Whether in a Classroom or at Parties, in a Crowded Cafe or Your Grandmother’s Living Room, While Everyone Else in the World is Completely Useless in this Area.”
It gradually becomes more evident over the course of the novel that Vivian may be in less control than she seems of her life. She’s plagued by crippling anxieties surrounding possible dangers in the world around her, she struggles with an all-consuming obsession with her weight and is clearly dealing with a serious eating disorder, forms deeply unhealthy romantic attachments, and continues to struggle with familial relationships. Vivian’s tenacity and single-minded nature is thrown off balance by a particularly triggering family reunion that threatens to topple the precarious house that she’s built around herself. Vivian begins destroying the friendships that have previously kept her afloat, makes the complicated decision to cut off her family, and spirals into a self-destructive revenge fantasy focused on a former schoolmate.
Johnson weaves this tale of a woman who has been let down by her loved ones, ground down by the daily abuses of racism and sexism, who continues to struggle with untreated PTSD with humor and a sharp-eyed wit that forces the reader to come to terms with its subject’s many complications and flaws. The concluding disaster of the novel, which the reader can see coming from a mile away, watches Vivian combust in a flame created by own insecurities, anxieties, and toxic self-absorption. The novel offers a nuanced and unbiased examination of its complex heroine, and while its certainly compelling, this reader struggled to understand some of the narrative choices that Johnson makes in terms of what details to include or exclude from the story. Overall, Post-Traumatic is a strong debut about a woman on the edge, struggling to come to terms with her abuse and the system that allowed it to happen.