https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.037
Unclaimed Wounds: Gendered Memory, Silence, and the Poetics of Trauma in Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age
RUKSANA M K
Independent Researcher
ruksanasana2000@gmail.com
Abstract: This article offers a trauma-theoretical reading of Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age, examining how memory, silence, and gendered subjectivity are negotiated in the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War. Drawing on the trauma theories of Cathy Caruth and Judith Herman, the study analyses literary representations of trauma through fragmentation, latency, and affective excess. It explores how women in the novel experience and witness violence, showing that feminine subjectivity emerges through both personal and collective acts of witnessing.
The article further examines experiences of violence, loss, and displacement, focusing on the limits of articulating trauma in language. Traumatic memories reappear through bodily sensations, fragmented consciousness, and recurring recollections, revealing trauma as an oscillation between immediate terror and delayed understanding. Attention is given to women survivors of war and their negotiations with fear, resistance, and survival within social structures that often silence such experiences. Moving beyond a purely psychoanalytic approach, the study also foregrounds the body and physical space as crucial sites where trauma, memory, survival, and witnessing are embodied and narrated.
Keywords: A Golden Age, Trauma Theory, Gendered Trauma, Memory and Silence, Bangladesh Liberation War, Narrative Fragmentation
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