Trauma and Recovery in Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD Candidate of English Literature, Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

2 Assistant Professor, Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran

3 Assistant Professor, Department of English, Tabriz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tabriz, Iran.

10.34785/J014.2022.508

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the impact of the traumatic experiences on the identity formation of Shaila Abdulla’s main character in Saffron Dreams and elaborates on how she manages to overcome her diverse emotional burdens. The author, who is concerned with Muslim women’s multiple identities and struggles in the American Diaspora, discusses the challenges of living in the increasing Islamophobic climate in the aftermath of 9/11 through the life of her heroine, Arissa Illahi, a Pakistani writer and artist, who loses her husband in the collapse of the World Trade Centre. Judith Herman’s conceptions of trauma and recovery are applied to discuss the impact of trauma on the identity formation of the character and how she succeeds to go through the process of healing. The paper also analyzes the literary strategies and narrative techniques in this feminist trauma narrative to indicate how the author has tried to represent what is originally marked by voicelessness. The results of the study demonstrates that although the traumatic event of 9/11 and its consequences has devastating effects on Arissa, she as an artist is able to utilize her psychological resources and to take advantage of familial ties to cope successfully with the traumatic experiences in her life, tolerate adversities, and even develop an optimistic view point about new possibilities for her future life. This paper supports the aim of contemporary feminist traumatology which is to make women’s trauma visible, give meaning to it, and ultimately create frameworks that promote the healing of trauma. Cathy Caruth, Judith Herman, and Laurie Vickroy are among the main theoreticians of the research.     

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

Abdullah, Shaila. Saffron Dreams. Ann Arbor, MI: Modern History Press, 2009.
Allen, Christopher. Islamophobia. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010.
Andrews, Molly. “Opening to the original contributions: Counter-narratives and the power to                 oppose”. In: Considering Counter-narratives: Narrating, Resisting, Making Sense (eds.)             M.G.W. Bamberg and M. Andrews, 1-6. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2004. 
Assella, Shashikala. “Contemporary South Asian American Women’s Fiction: The Difference”. Diss. University of Nottingham. 2015.
bell hooks. Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black. Boston: South Land Press, 1989.
Bessel A. van der Kolk and Alexander C. McFarlane, “The Black Hole of Trauma,” In Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, (eds.) Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. New York: Guildford, 1996.
Bhabha, K. Homi. “Cultures in Between”. In Questions of Cultural Identity (eds.) S. Hall and D.  Du Gay. London: Stage Publications, 1996. 
Bonanno, George. “Loss, Trauma, and human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events”? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20-28, 2004. 
Bond, Lucy and Craps, Stef. Trauma. London: Routledge, 2019.
Boss, Pauline. Ambiguous Loss. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000. 
Brison, J. Susan. “Trauma Narratives and the Remaking of the Self.” In Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present.  (eds.) Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crew, and Leo Spitzer Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1999. 
Brown, L. Susan. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory (ed). Cathy Caruth. Baltimore. John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories of Subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995.
---. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore John Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Cvek, Sven. 9/11: Event, Trauma, Nation, Globalization. Zagreb, 2009. 
Henke, Suzette. Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women's Life-Writing. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
Kaplan, E. Ann. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Kirby, Farrell. Post-traumatic Culture: Injury and Interpretation in the Nineties. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Laub, Dori.  “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening”. In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, (eds.). Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub New York: Routledge, 1992.
Lepore, Stephen, and Joshua M. Smyth. “The Writing Cure: An Overview.” In The Writing Cure: How Expressive Writing Promotes Health and Emotional Well-Being, (eds.) by Stephen J. Lepore and Joshua M. Smyth. American Psychological Association, 2002.
Lindeman, H. Nelson. Damaged Identities, Narrative Repair. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Martin, Richard. “Visiting Ground Zero: Sacred Echoes in Secular Rites. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis.22, 268-287, 2010.
McNally, Richard J. Remembering Trauma. Bellknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.
Miller, Nancy. Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community. Illinois: University of Illinois press, 2002.
Moran, Patricia. Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and the Aesthetics of Trauma. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Radstone, Susannah. “Trauma Theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics”. Paragraph. 30 (1), 9-29, 2007. 
Tedeschi, G. Richard and Lawrence G. Calhoun. “The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory: Measuring the positive legacy of trauma”. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 9(3), 455–472,1996. 
Vickroy, Laurie. Trauma and survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002.  
Whitehead, Anne. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. 
Žižek, Slavoj. On Belief. London: Routledge, 2001.
Critical Literary Studies
Volume 4, Issue 1 - Serial Number 7
March 2022
Pages 163-182

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 24 March 2021
  • Revise Date: 05 July 2021
  • Accept Date: 21 November 2021

Share

How to cite

Statistics