Abstract

The Shade of You brings together two strangers when Indigo, a 23-year-old woman, falls upon a journal belonging to someone she only knows as “E.F.”. Passionate about stationery, Indigo first finds herself drawn to this small notebook because of her curiosity for the object itself, filled with this stranger’s handwriting written in a light lavender ink. As Indigo flips through its pages, her admiration for the visual images of words themselves leads to her need to read them. This is when she will witness the grief of an older sibling after the death of Sophie, the journal writer’s 16-year-old sister. With an intertwining storyline comprised of E.F.’s journal entries and Indigo’s present life, the journal becomes a door for Indigo into the realities of trauma and suicide as an older sister herself. Inspired by the works of Ocean Vuong and Ruth Ozeki and their respective take on grief and time, this story and its alternating narratives will bring to the surface a parallel between living and writing trauma, and reading it.