Narrativization of Gender Trauma in Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid SunsandSiba Shakib’s Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the portrayal of marginalized female characters in SibaShakib’s novel Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep and Khaled Hosseini's novel A Thousand Splendid Suns respectively. It investigates into the socio-political challenges faced by the female characters Mariam, Laila, and Shiorin-Gol. This dissertation argues that the novels narrativize the gender-induced trauma due to patriarchy, religious orthodoxy, and neo-colonial ideologies. Furthermore, this study explains how female protagonists navigate and resist cultural hegemonic power amid traumatic circumstances and why they are compelled to flee their homeland due to oppressive ideologies. The dissertation uses the theoretical and conceptual framework of Ruth Leys proposed on Traumaas well as Frantz Fanon's notion of internalized oppression. Moreover, it has utilized Kali Tal's notion of sexual abuse of women to addresses an individual experience of collective Trauma as well as UrvasiButalia’s concept on politics of silencing women’s pain, and Ritu Menon and Kamla Bashin’s argument on women as the equilibrium of honor that constructs trauma. Besides, it borrows Stef Crap’s idea of postcolonial trauma and Lucy Bond’s notion of multidimensionality which discuss psychological, cultural, and socio-historical dimension of trauma. This dissertation employs interpretative strategies to analyze working through of trauma of the major characters, and the theory of gender trauma. Keywords: trauma, gender trauma, resilience, internalized oppression, patriarchy, religion and neo-colonialism, triple-marginalization of women