Imprint: A Memoir of Trauma in the Third Generation [Paperback]

Imprintis a profound and courageous exploration of trauma, family, and the importance of breaking silence and telling stories. This book is a fresh and startling combination of history and personal revelation.?

When her son almost died at birth and her grandmother passed away, something inside of Claire Sicherman snapped. Her body, which had always felt weighed down by unknown hurt, suddenly suffered from chronic health conditions, and her heart felt cleaved in two. Her grief was so large it seemed to encompass more than her own lifetime, and she became determined to find out why.?

Sicherman grew up readingAnne Frankand watchingSchindlers Listwith almost no knowledge of the Holocausts impact on her specific family. Though most of her ancestors were murdered in the Holocaust, Sichermans grandparents didnt talk about their trauma and her mother grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia completely unaware she was even Jewish. Now a mother herself, Sicherman uses vignettes, epistolary style, and other unconventional forms to explore the intergenerational transmission of trauma, about the fact that genes can be altered and carry memories, which are then passed downa genetic imprinting.?

With astounding grace and strength, Sicherman weaves together a story that not only honours her ancestors but offers the truth to the next generation and her now nine-year-old son. A testimony of the connections between mind and body, the past and the present,Imprintis devastatingly beautifulultimately a story of love and survival.?

Claire Sicherman is a graduate of The Humber School for Writers and Langara College. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies from UBC. She is a facilitator in a multi-generational writing group called Home Words Project. She has participated in a Corporeal Writing workshop with Lidia Yuknavitch and in Writing & The Body lÏ