Fauna as Storied Matter for Working Through Trauma In My Beautiful Birds (2017)

Abstract

The paradigm shift toward ecocentrism in children’s literature calls for a reconsideration of how matter and nature participate in narratives about global crises, including armed conflict. While material ecocriticism has been applied across many literary contexts, no study has yet examined fauna as a material medium for trauma healing within contemporary children’s war literature. This study analyzes fauna as storied matter mediating trauma recovery in the picture book My Beautiful Birds (2017) by Suzanne Del Rizzo, focusing on Sami, a child Syrian war refugee. Employing a qualitative descriptive method grounded in material ecocriticism and Dominick LaCapra’s trauma theory, this research examines how birds are manifested as material agents in the narrative and how they function as a medium for the psychic mechanisms of acting out and working through. The findings show that birds manifest as powerful material agents through color, sound, and physical presence, entering Sami’s body and consciousness as more than passive symbols. His attachment to absent birds initially traps him in a repetitive cycle of acting out, materialized in an unfillable food bowl and in black paint that overwhelms his attempt to paint them. Subsequent material interactions — a kite colored with his birds’ feathers, an unplanned encounter with small birds in the camp, and a mural painted on the camp wall — facilitate his transition toward working through. This healing affirms trans-corporeality, showing that human psychological recovery is inseparable from ecological recognition and from matter’s own capacity to co-produce narratives of hope amid destruction.