Memorializing Trauma: Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave: A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami

Sonali Deraniyagala’s memoir, Wave, recounts the catastrophic loss of her entire family while on vacation in Sri Lanka in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Paying close attention to her emotions—from recollections of her childhood, the days of courtship, to the joyful days of mothering and family life—to the intense agony of losing it all, the book serves both as an example of a devastatingly beautiful memoir and a first-hand account of trauma and healing. Through a close reading of the book, this paper intends to find a new way forward for trauma theory as well as find more effective ways of healing psychological wounds.