The Myth of ‘Wound’ Writing: The Multiple Surfaces of Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow

ABSTRACT

The idea of writing from the wound is a pervasive concept in the discourse of writing, yet the relationship between language and trauma is a contradictory one. Writing ‘from’ the wound suggests a causal relationship between traumatic encounter and the writing, which fails to fully account for the symbolic rupture. Yet, the relationship between writing and wound can be seen more productively as involving a movement away from the wound instead of towards it. This process is enacted in Cold Enough for Snow, a work of autobiographical fiction, in which the narrator hints towards certain structural traumas, without describing those wounds. Instead, Cold Enough for Snow through its focus on surface descriptions, the preference for metonymy over metaphor, the coming together of different time strands, creates a veneer-like surface that gestures towards wounds. The novel moves the narrator away from a state of disconnection, towards a reconnection with the mother and others, following an intense period of reflection. In this way, the idea of wound writing can be seen in Cold Enough for Snow as a movement towards healing. The directionality of this movement is crucial to writers seeking to avoid traumatic repetition in their writing.

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma
• autobiographical fiction
• Jessica Au
• Cold Enough for Snow
• wound writing

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Gretchen Shirm

Gretchen Shirm is the author of Having Cried Wolf, Where the Light Falls, and The Crying Room. Her scholarly writing in the area of testimony, trauma, and emotion has been published in Textual Practice, Critique, New Writing, Life Writing, and Australian Literary Studies, amongst other places. She was named a 2011 Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist for her collection of short stories, Having Cried Wolf. Her first novel Where the Light Falls was shortlisted for the 2017 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her novel-in-stories The Crying Room was published in July 2023. Her fiction and criticism have been published widely, including in The Saturday Paper, Griffith Review, Best Australian Stories, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Overland, Kill Your Darlings, The Australian, The Monthly, Art Monthly, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Review of Australian Fiction and Southerly.