“I wanted to know whether and how trauma as a possibility, not an actuality, could shape girls’ being in the world in potentially damaging ways,” says Rajiva. “Most work examines trauma and sexual violence after the fact. I wanted to know what happens in the lead-up to something that, according to the stats, happens to many women before the age of 25.”
Her book Girlhoods in the Traumascape: Sexual Violence in the Everyday Lives of Young Indigenous and White Women has been published by the University of British Columbia Press. It draws on focus groups with girls aged 13 to 19 to examine how they understand safety, fear, responsibility and resistance in the everyday spaces that shape their lives.