Framework for Understanding Intergenerational Trauma in the Black and Brown Diaspora

Can politics really be left outside the therapy room when exploring intergenerational trauma and anti-oppressive practice? Within the current social and political climate, questions of history, power, identity, and structural inequality shape how trauma is experienced, understood, and transmitted across generations. For many Black and Brown diasporic communities, trauma cannot be separated from the broader social, cultural, and political environments in which individuals and families live. In A Framework for Understanding Intergenerational Trauma in the Black and Brown Diaspora, Novena-Chanel Davies introduces the Integrative Epigenetic Relational Approach (IERA-Therapy(R)), a model that explores how trauma is transmitted, embodied, and transformed across generations. Drawing on insights from epigenetics, relational psychotherapy, neuroscience, attachment theory, and socio-political analysis, this work presents a framework that considers the biological, relational, and societal forces shaping emotional and psychological development. Positioned at the intersection of trauma, identity, and social context, this book invites practitioners, educators, researchers, and students to reconsider how therapy engages with history, power, and lived experience when supporting individuals and communities affected by migration, colonisation, structural inequality, and intergenerational trauma. Alongside its theoretical foundation, the book offers reflective exercises, case studies, and discussion on clinical implications, supporting practitioners and readers to apply the framework in therapeutic contexts. It explores culturally embedded archetypes, including the "Strong Black Woman" and "Strong Black Man," as well as themes of mixed heritage, identity, belonging, parental-wounding, and generational silence, supporting clinical work with survival responses shaped by historical and relational conditions. About the Author Novena-Chanel Davies is an accredited integrative counsellor and psychotherapist, supervisor, lecturer, and researcher specialising in trauma, neurodivergence, LGBTQIA+ experiences, race, identity, and intergenerational healing. She is the founder of the Epigenetic Relational Therapy Academy (ERTA) and the developer of IERA-Therapy(R), an integrative framework exploring the biopsychosocial, relational, and political dimensions of healing.