ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at one instance where a traumatic event within the life of a family enters the circuits of social and cultural construction that enable pain and suffering to be collectively understood as 'cultural trauma'. It aims to textual evidence of the case's reception as a traumatic event by reading a sample of the Chamberlain Papers: some 20,000 letters from the public to Lindy Chamberlain now held in the National Library. The chapter shows that even the most humble of handwritten letters can inform the public sphere; that life writing can at times take on larger causes; and that it has a commemorative function, by focusing on the letters as a discursive formation of the public. The main exponents of the term cultural trauma are the sociologists associated with the Yale School, and in particular Jeffrey Alexander, through his publications on cultural trauma, social performance, and collective identity.
