Ubuzima bugira icyanga aruko bufite icyizere, or Life has taste when there is hope: Transcendent trauma narratives of post-genocide Rwanda by Jen Osborne, M.A. A Dissertation In TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION & RHETORIC Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OR PHILOSOPHY Approved Ken Baake, Ph.D. Amy Koerber, Ph.D. Sean Zdenek, Ph.D. Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School May, 2011 Copyright 2011, Jen L. Osborne Texas Tech University, Jen Osborne, May 2011 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS December, 2010: Cloudcroft, New Mexico It took me over ten hours to drive here, and I got on the road late after turning in semester grades at the college where I teach. It is past midnight when I arrive at my rental house. It‘s cold here, though there‘s no snow yet. I quickly unload the car—a box of kitchen supplies, two boxes of books and research materials, my laptop, a printer, clothes, yoga mat. Every aspect of this writing retreat has been planned for efficiency: I have to be home in ten days to celebrate the winter holidays with my family. Worn out, I fall into bed. After I awake the next morning, I carry my cup of coffee outside to the sunny deck and realize why I had to come here to Cloudcroft, why the ten-hour drive was necessary for me to write the first draft of this dissertation: I listen to the wind blow through the towering pine trees and breathe in the fragrance from the warming pine needle litter. If I close my eyes, I could be in Kibuye again. Kibuye curls around part of the shores of Lake Kivu in Rwanda‘s Western Province. In July 2009, I spent five days in Kibuye with my research assistant, Julius Kwizera; Ariane Karame, a trauma counselor; and ten women who agreed to participate in my trauma writing workshop that is the heart of this dissertation. The ten women had been children in 1994 and had, against overwhelming odds, survived the Genocide against the Tutsi that claimed almost a million lives in less than 100 days. The week that we spent together grieving deeply through the act of writing was the most amazing week of my life. Their strength motivated me throughout this process of dissertation writing and continues to inspire me and fuel my passion for trauma writing research. I have so many questions about suffering and about how humans cope with the incomprehensible pain of trauma. Of course, I‘m not the only one: These types of questions have led others to create beautiful art, because in this kind of pain, the mind ii Texas Tech University, Jen Osborne, May 2011 is not enough; the heart and whole body engage. In her Dreaming from the Labyrinth CD, native San Antonion Tish Hinojosa sings …My own mind is searching for an answer from the eyes that look right back. I want to know about the outer reaches, everything that heartbreak teaches, questions of survival that in every soul exist. What about the endless sky? A child wants to know just why the world spins round and people die and does it hurt? Well, baby, so do I…. (1996) It seems to me that, like the questions of this child, we turn to others for help in our search for answers. In other words, we survive through relationship. Other artists paint a more solitary picture, where suffering is an unknowable emotional landscape. A part of Mary Oliver‘s poem, ―In Blackwater Woods‖ reads …Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know.… (1994) iii Texas Tech University, Jen Osborne, May 2011 But some of us want—need—to know the meaning of that black river of loss, because we find ourselves there on its banks again and again, desolate, alone, and hurting. If we find ourselves there often, we might begin to wonder about it and perhaps begin to see that there are others there by that river, in the dark as we are, alone, and in pain. In time, we might come to see that despite the pain, that place of loss becomes a place where we come undone and can come together again. As a new researcher, this scholar‘s nightmare is not being able to live in and live with the difficulties that life provides for us. My nightmare is not engaging with that which is painful, being unable—for whatever reason—to dwell in such dark places, unable to bring in light and air. The Kibuye writers and the Rwandans I have spent time with during my few months in Rwanda have taught me that despite seemingly bottomless pain, humans can find joy and reasons to hope. I feel humbled by their trust and by their willingness to call out to each other when they find themselves at that river of loss. Relationships make this kind of inquiry possible, and I am grateful for a complex web of supportive personal, social, and intellectual connections that have made this research possible. I thank my fellow students in the online Technical Communication & Rhetoric program for being bright, creative, funny, generous, and caring. My online cohort, the Third Degreez, has been particularly supportive: Craig McKenney, Anne Papworth, Janie Santoy, DJ Weatherford, Becky Johnston, Tisha Harding, and Ritu Raju, PhD; I am especially grateful to Konstanze Alex-Brown who has been a very dear friend. I also thank Emil Towner, PhD, whose research on Rwandan reconciliation continues to motivate me. The faculty of the Technical Communication & Rhetoric program has also provided essential support. I am grateful to Brian Still, PhD, was an early catalyst for this line of research, when in May 2007, he urged me and my fellow Usability students iv Texas Tech University, Jen Osborne, May 2011 to pursue research that others might consider non-traditional. I also thank Rich Rice, PhD, who helped me navigate the technological issues for my dissertation defense. I am deeply indebted to my dissertation committee of Drs. Amy Koerber, Sean Zdenek, and to its chair, Ken Baake. Dr. Koerber‘s Health Communication course in Fall 2007 provided me early opportunities to begin studying trauma from a rhetorical perspective. This course also ignited my passion for the study of quality in qualitative research, which continues to strongly influence my approach to research. She has also been an inspiration for engaging in feminist, non-traditional research. Dr. Zdenek challenged me throughout my studies to clarify my perspectives, opinions, motivations, and my writing. My first class in this program was with Dr. Zdenek, and throughout this long process, whenever I felt lost among ideas, I retraced my learning back to Fall 2006 and pulled out the readings and my writing for that class, Foundations of Technical Communication, and that material would again ground me so that I could move forward. Near the end of my studies, his Rhetorical Methods course provided traction to examine texts from multiple perspectives and theories. I am especially grateful for Dr. Zdenek‘s straightforward reactions to my experimental writing early in the dissertation process which helped to shape the communication of this research in fundamental ways. I enrolled in four courses with the chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Baake; three of those courses focused on research: Technical Reports, Research Methods, Field Research Methods, and an independent field research study during my first trip to Rwanda. Dr. Baake generously guided me through the traumatic losses and incredibly painful experiences of my personal life that coincided with and threatened my completion of this doctoral study. His advice stemming from his years in Africa has been indispensible and he has been an unflinching supporter of my research. His questions and advice lifted this dissertation as well as my comprehension of its v Texas Tech University, Jen Osborne, May 2011 implications. I thank him especially for his insistence on the presence of my voice in this dissertation. I also am very grateful to Dr. Rosemary Cogan, Professor of Psychology, who served as the Graduate Dean‘s representative at my dissertation defense. Dr. Cogan also provided me supportive guidance in the process of submitting this research for approval by Tech‘s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects. Dr. Cogan also generously assisted me with the statistical explanations for my research data. I also am grateful for my family‘s support during my doctoral study. My younger brother Jeff didn‘t live long enough to see me finish the degree, but he was so proud of my research. Our emails and phone calls during my first trip to Rwanda enabled us to reconnect in the months prior to his death, and my profound sense of losing him so suddenly, so unexpectedly, allowed me a small glimpse into the type of pain that helps me empathize more deeply with others whose family members whose lives have ended all too early. Not only did I lose a younger brother during these last few years, but I also lost the greatest champion of all my endeavors, my mother. I wish so much that she could have seen me finish this degree and finally earn those three letters after my name. My accomplishment reflects back onto her, even though she is not here to acknowledge it. I thank my niece Carly Osborne who often looked after my sons and my house while I was in Lubbock and in Rwanda.