This dissertation examines how trauma, perception, and collective memory are represented in American and Iraqi literary and cinematic works about the Iraq War. Through a comparative lens, it investigates how personal and systematic trauma are portrayed, interpreted, and memorialized across cultural boundaries. Utilizing Critical Theory as its central framework, and supported by Trauma Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Feminist Literary Theory, and Intercultural Communication Theory, the study explores how narratives of war challenge dominant ideological structures surrounding the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. Using qualitative textual and film analysis, the research interrogates how both American and Iraqi works convey the intertwined nature of individual suffering and collective trauma. The first chapter explores personal and societal trauma through literary works by American authors juxtaposed with Iraqi perspectives that reveal the silenced or marginalized experiences of war. The second chapter addresses trauma and displacement, analyzing Iraqi novels that portray exile, diaspora, and identity reconstruction in the post-war landscape. The third chapter examines how trauma challenges gender dynamics through films and examining two American made films and comparing them to two Iraqi made films illustrating how representations of masculinity, femininity, and childhood are reshaped by war’s psychological and moral repercussions. This study exposes how literature and film serve as powerful vehicles for negotiating trauma, identity, and memory. It argues that these cultural works not only document the emotional and ethical complexities of war but also contest one-sided narratives that glorify or sanitize violence.