Trauma, Memory and Testimony in Rigoberta Menchu's I and Radwa Ashour's The Woman from Tantoura

Abstract

In a world of war, genocide, injustice and political violence, trauma becomes a central feature of it. Traumatic experiences and their consequences are the core of life stories told by survivors of human abuse. As a process of recollecting impressions and events from the past, memory and narration have become a healing process of recovery and a testimony of their witnesses to such crimes of humanity. Integrating the personal with the political, fiction with history, the testimonial narrative tends to develop a historical understanding of the traumatic past and a chance for marginalized voice to be heard. Latin American and Palestinian history is marked by political oppression. This paper seeks to recognize testimony as an empowering mode of resistance denouncing military oppression and exposing its abuses against indigenous Guatemalans and Palestinians. The emergence of testimonial narrative in Latin America gives voice to Rigoberta Menchú as she recounts the story of a young Guatemalan Indian woman experiencing military oppression and discrimination. From another point, Palestine recalls a series of painful images of loss, diaspora, massacres, refugee camps and settlements. In her latest novel, The Woman from Tantoura, the highly acclaimed Egyptian writer Radwa Ashour chronicles the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ by following the story of a woman from the village of Tantoura reflecting her struggles before, during and after the establishment of the State of Israel. The story is told from a young girl's point of view as it develops into mature observations of an adult woman and her sufferings. Her memories and the testimonials of Palestinian survivors constitute a challenge and resistance to political oppression. This paper explores the relationship between trauma and memory, and the representations of these memories in the language and form of their testimony.