Girlhoods in the Traumascape: Sexual Violence in the Everyday Lives of Young Indigenous and White Wo

A first-hand account of how girls navigate everyday sexual violence, highlighting the role that settler colonialism plays in their different experiences.

Most feminist work on gendered sexual violence focuses on adult white women, and most readings of trauma interpret it in terms of past events. Girlhoods in the Traumascape sets aside both of these conventions.

Focusing on the Canadian context, Mythili Rajiva argues that we don't know enough about how girls and younger women--who are the most likely to face sexual violence--interpret potentially traumatic social landscapes in which they are constantly told what could happen to them. Nor do we understand how settler colonialism affects their experiences. In an approach informed by affect theory, girlhood studies, and Indigenous feminism, Rajiva assembled focus groups of Canadian white and Indigenous girls aged thirteen to nineteen to compare how they navigate the everyday reality of sexual violence and its discourses.

With sensitivity and acuity, she lets girls reveal, in their own voices, the impacts that media messages, parental worry, school surveillance, peer interactions, potential dangers in public spaces, and the legal system have on their ways of being in the world. We need to listen.