Writer Jen Soriano speaks trauma, colonization and healing ahead of ‘Nervous’ debut

“I have felt like my pain has always been combined with a very, very deep grief that felt bigger than me and felt unmatched to anything that I had personally lost. It led me to kind of suspect that, ‘hey, maybe this is something that is actually from my grandfather, or from my grandmother and just isn't mine.” 

(Photo by Naomi Ishisaka)

Jen Soriano is a Fillipinx writer and movement builder whose debut collection of essays, “Nervous,” comes out on Aug. 22.

“I started writing because I wanted to solve a mystery,” Soriano said. But unlike many books exploring trauma, this book is not about her personal journey to diagnosis. 

“I always knew the cumulative trauma piece was the set up,” Soriano said. “I didn't want it to be one of those stories that contribute to that feeling that we should be kind of ‘over’ trauma. I think that there's sort of a trend of like, ‘No, we're not going to talk about trauma because that's been talked about too much, and it makes people stereotype us as traumatized people and label us as victims. We're more than our traumas; let’s not talk about trauma.’”

Instead, the collection of 14 essays ranges from topics like the U.S. colonization of the Philippines, music-based activism in the Bay Area, and their journey to parenthood. Soriano spoke to SPRHDRS over Zoom about her book, trauma, colonization, and how to think about the sometimes grifty nature of alternative medicine. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The cover of Jen Soriano’s “Nervous.” (Image courtesy of Jen Soriano)

Let’s start with “Nervous.” What inspired you to write the book? 

I had written an essay called “A Brief History of Her Pain,” which actually is the opening essay of the collection now. After I wrote that essay. I felt that maybe I was done.

But that feeling only lasted a little while because I got a diagnosis of central sensitivity syndrome. That, together with other diagnoses that I had gotten over the years, made me realize that all of these things that are supposedly wrong with my body have to do with my nervous system. That became this sort of irony that was just too good to not explore since my father was a neurosurgeon — a nervous system expert — and he hadn't been able to help me with these conditions. 

That’s really interesting. You touched on discourse about trauma earlier, and I feel like there’s a very particular brand of Asian American trauma memoir that has broken into the mainstream in recent years. But also, since becoming mainstream, words like “trauma” can become empty signifiers. How would you define trauma, and what do you hope to add to the conversation around it?

I would define trauma as something that happens in the body — not an external event. It's something that happens in the body in reaction to something that is perceived as life-threatening, and you do not have control over eliminating the threat. 

What I want to add to the conversation is pulling back the lens on looking at what is traumatic. A lot of times we think of it only as interpersonal relationships. And that's important, but the reason that I wanted to go further and talk about deeper layers is because for me, the problem was not my mother or father and how they parented me. I think the problem was how they learned to be in relationship to imperial war and colonization in order to survive. They learned coping mechanisms that did not translate into nurturing parenting. 

Aurora Levins Morales wrote that the root of mass trauma is oppression. And so for anybody who is interested in healing and healing trauma specifically, it can, should and must include looking at societal, structural, and institutional transformation in order to prevent trauma that is coming from systemic sources.

Speaking of oppression, as you write in the book, Americans don’t know much about colonial history. I honestly didn’t even know the U.S. had colonized the Philippines until I took a class on Asian American History in college. How did you make the connection between colonialism and your own pain? 

It's hard for me to remember how I learned about American colonization in the Philippines because it was definitely not from traditional education. I learned through community and mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area through activism in my 20s.

Writing the book was also a learning process. I had to go into some pretty hairy details about American colonization in the Philippines. It was very painful and made me feel even more motivated/disgusted — that the stuff had happened but also disgusted that we aren't taught this history — and therefore more motivated to share it.

In terms of the connection between colonization and my own pain, that's where this gets a little bit more mystical and “woo.” I feel a very spiritual connection to my grandfather that just can't be explained by Western science. And that led me to learn more about his story.

I have felt like my pain has always been combined with a very, very deep grief that felt bigger than me and felt unmatched to anything that I had personally lost. It led me to kind of suspect that, “hey, maybe this is something that is actually from my grandfather, or from my grandmother and just isn't mine.” 

When I was doing research for the book, I came across the research of Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, a Lakota scholar who's credited with coining the term “historical trauma.” Her research was the linchpin for me, affirming what I had already suspected which was that I was carrying this heavy unresolved grief from my ancestors, then that type of unresolved grief and trauma can translate into physiological impacts and behavioral impacts in current generations. 

The type of historical trauma model that she outlines for Native American populations has correlations to colonization in the Philippines and how much was lost through colonization with the exception of the completely stolen land. Once I found that framework, it just resonated with me so much it landed on my body as truth. That's when that piece of my narrative clicked in, and it was very healing.

In the book, you talk about some alternative medicine. Specifically, someone called “The Bone Whisperer” and how he helped you with your pain. In a society where Western medicine leaves very little room for alternate understandings, growing up with your father being a neurosurgeon, and where to be honest, there are just a lot of grifters out there, how are you thinking about for, lack of a better word, the “woowoo” stuff? 

One of the main messages of the book is that the environment that we are in affects our well-being, and I was in an environment [in San Francisco] where “woo” stuff was as accepted, if not more accepted, as conventional medicine. But for every person who has helped me significantly on my healing journey, I've seen 20 to 30 people that I wish I hadn't spent money on that I wrote bad Google reviews for. 

So the fact that people with systemic, chronic illness — mysterious things wrong with them that western medicine doesn't understand — basically have to sort through by trial and error on our own bodies, who works and who does it for us, makes me angry. 

I've always been hopeful about alternative therapies because conventional therapies never worked for me. But along with that hope comes a lot of risk. It takes a lot of persistence and desperation to continue to find what we need, but I think the more that we talk about it, the more that we can start to shape a health care system that is different from what we have today.

In your essay, “Bayanihan,” you write about nipa huts and how you and your friends were looking for your own metaphorical nipa huts — places where you could “shelter in community” — as part of your healing journey. What are your nipa huts in the present? 

My two most favorite nipa huts right now are a very particular BIPOC femme writing community that I have built over the past few years who I just feel like are just such ride or die people. We have so much love and support for each other that sometimes I forget the way that we know each other is through writing.

The other nipa hut is my kid who is one of my best friends. They're like nine years old, and it's just such a fun age. I feel like — not to make it all about me — but I do feel like I'm getting to reclaim some of my childhood through getting to relate to him at this age. Because at this age, I was playing with my brothers that hadn't left for school. And I just feel like we have so much fun together.