Frozen Sunflowers and Tangled Vines
Mentor: Ellen Whittet
My memoir Frozen Sunflowers and Tangled Vines dives into the personal experiences of trauma and transracial adversity and examines how such events can substantially alter one’s livelihood and identity. It chronicles the violence of the developing-world slums and the failures of the developed world’s nuclear families, capturing the struggles of growing up in unstable, altering environments and witnessing the horrors of life and death as a still-developing mind. This narrative also explores neglected and too often glamorized topics, such as overseas adoption, addiction, and trauma bonding, using a psychological lens to reflect on the roots of oppression and familial wounds. These are the seeds and vines that continue to grow and mangle to create the person I am today, and this memoir is the beginning of my journey to unravel them. Frozen Sunflowers and Tangled Vines is the ecology of my life, but most importantly it is a small step to bringing awareness to the childhood traumas and injustices that have been overlooked and neglected.
Read an excerpt from Resh’s memoir Frozen Sunflowers and Tangled Vines
Read a profile of Resh Grewal: “Writing from the Wound: Resh Grewal” (Montecito Journal, Aug 2022)
