How to Remember: The Interplay of Memory and Identity Formation in Post-Disaster Communities

Abstract

For disaster survivors, recovery requires more than regaining material losses and includes a need to incorporate the profoundly disruptive experience into individual and collective memory. Contemporary literature on post-traumatic stress notes the vivid sensory and recurrent qualities of traumatic disaster memories. By constructing a narrative from this sensory data, both individually and as a community, survivors create a recollection which is less likely to produce the same anxiety and allows individuals to incorporate disaster events into personal and community history. This narrative is also embedded in the landscape through the creation of sacred spaces, memorials, and monuments. This article explores the formation of post-disaster identities through the application of memory by survivors of the May 22, 2011, tornado in Joplin, Missouri.

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