William Wical is a doctoral student in Anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park with a research concentration in health. His research seeks to understand the presentation of traumatic stress disorders as products of historical, social, and cultural factors. This approach emphasizes the resilience of survivors of violent injury, particularly young males of color who are disproportionately impacted by multiple forms of violence. William is interested in the use of a phenomenological and ethnographic approach that focuses on survivors’ narratives and self-definitions of wellbeing. These narratives emphasize the intersections of criminal justice involvement, housing and employment insecurity, environmental features, neighborhood conditions, and economic precarity as important features for violent trauma and recidivism. This perspective recasts survivors’ discourses of traumatic stress as acts of resistance by which they cultivate shared meaning for themselves and their families. An emphasis on subjective experiences of traumatic stress problematizes definitions of traumatic stress disorders that focus on singular traumatic events and the individual as the site of trauma.