Trauma, Postmemory, and Resilience in Aiwanose Odafen's We Were Girls Once

Trauma is a universal and deeply complex phenomenon that cuts across cultures, societies, and historical periods, affecting individuals in both personal and collective ways. This paper examines the representation of trauma, postmemory, and resilience in Aiwanose Odafen’s We Were Girls Once, negotiating the intertwined experiences of Ego, Zina, and Eriife through literary trauma theory, postmemory, and resilience, with particular attention to childhood violence, sexual abuse, psychological fragmentation, silence, patriarchal power, religious authority, friendship, and the persistence of inherited memory. Trauma is situated as resistant to linear memory and conventional narration, which recognises the cultural conditions shaping traumatic experience and recovery. The paper argues that domestic violence is a formative source of psychological injury and that sexual and institutional violence deepen that injury. It also foregrounds how silence functions simultaneously as a survival strategy and a mechanism of social oppression. The paper further contends that resilience is not presented as a definitive recovery but as an ongoing process of survival, relationship, self-articulation, and reconstruction. Postmemory is examined through the persistence of familial and historical loss, including the effects of the Nigerian Civil War on later generations. Finally, it concludes that trauma is represented as both personal and socio-cultural, while it uses friendship, memory, testimony, and narrative reconstruction to foreground the possibility of agency and renewed belonging.