Lexington Books
Pages: 346
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-7936-0229-9 • Hardback • June 2022 • $130.00 • (£100.00)
978-1-7936-0231-2 • Paperback • April 2024 • $42.99 • (£35.00)
978-1-7936-0230-5 • eBook • June 2022 • $40.50 • (£30.00)
Shirley A. Heying is applied anthropologist working primarily in the government sector.
Chapter 1: Origins and Orientations
Chapter 2: Destroying the Seed
Chapter 3: Trauma and Loss
Chapter 4: Trauma and Resilience
Chapter 5: Born Indigenous, Die Indigenous
Chapter 6: Making a Future
Chapter 7: Giving Away the Future
How do child survivors, orphaned by the violence of Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict, thrive and even flourish into adulthood? Anthropologist Shirley Heying describes her meticulous and compassionate research over almost three decades to document the resilience of 20 child survivors who grew up in a children’s home, safely ensconced from the brutal terrorizing of Maya communities by civil patrols and the Guatemalan army. The family-style home and supportive caregivers allowed children to reclaim their ethnic identity, grow, and succeed despite the trauma of their early lives. As Dr. Heying follows the child survivors into adulthood, she chronicles the lifelong sequels of early trauma and how resilience must repeatedly be enacted by survivors in order to face the transitions and challenges of life following tragic loss.
— Judith L. Gibbons, professor emerita, Saint Louis University