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My annotations focused on 3 main things

1. Being able to identify Stillman’s argument in the first paragraph, in red to understand the direction that the whole essay revolved around. The argument is how intergenerational trauma can affect someone who never actually came face to face with the traumatic event. 

2. I focused mainly on the narrative of the essay and how Shoji’s trauma had affected her. I found it important to understand how Shoji felt through asking myself questions within my annotations, and then answering them myself. Being able to answer the question I asked allowed me to understand the text and Shoji’s experience and trauma better. 

3. This essay is obviously about trauma and the effects it has on people and their families, even if only one person was subject to the trauma. I focused a lot of my annotations on the basis of understanding trauma through Stillman’s narrative in Shoji and outside sources that explore trauma. The way that Stillman describes how trauma can be detrimental to all party’s involved is something that any reader can pick up on. Stillman uses Shoji to show how one person’s life can change instantly and sometimes how these experiences can traumatize others who had not experienced the event.