She also nurses an eating disorder and goes on many fruitless dates in search of the perfect man. Vivian spends her free time smoking weed with her best friend, Jane, in an effort to cope with the painful elements of her life outside work, such as phone calls with her drunk older brother, Michael, who dances around the sexual abuse inflicted upon them as children by their mother’s boyfriends. Among the cases she’s working on is Melissa’s, a teenager recently transferred to the adult unit who pulls a knife on hospital staff. Vivian is a 30-something state-appointed attorney in a public psychiatric hospital, advocating for the rights of patients. Readers who loved Open Water, A Little Life or Luster will adore this razor-sharp book about the aftermath of trauma that somehow manages to brim with warmth, laughter, and hope.Johnson explores in her brutally funny and poignant debut a Black Latinx woman’s childhood trauma and daily struggles.

Will she find a way to repair what matters most to her? A debut from a stunning talent, Post-Traumatic is a new kind of survivor narrative, featuring a complex heroine who is blazingly, indelibly alive. But after a family reunion prompts Vivian to take a bold step, she finds herself alone in new and terrifying ways, without even Jane to confide in, and she starts to unravel.

For years, Vivian has self-medicated with a mix of dating, dieting, dark humour and smoking weed with her best friend, Jane. She lives in a constant state of hypervigilant awareness that makes even a simple train ride a heart-pounding drama.

Privately, Vivian contends with the memories and after-effects of her bad childhood, compounded by the everyday stresses of being a Black, Latinx woman living in a white society. Can Vivian find happiness after what has been done to her? To the outside observer, Vivian is a success story - a dedicated lawyer who advocates for mentally ill patients at a psychiatric hospital.

Chantal v johnson post traumatic