Fractured Selves: Narratives of Gender and Trauma in Shafi Ahmed’s The Half Widow and Shahnaz Bashir’s The Half Mother

Abstract

The study examines on two influential works from contemporary Kashmir, The Half Widow (2012) by Shafi Ahmed and The Half Mother (2014) by Shahnaz Bashir. Drawing upon trauma theory, feminist literary criticism and postcolonial discourse, this research explores how these narratives illuminate the creation of ‘fractured selves’ among women affected by enforced disappearances during the Kashmir conflict. This study demonstrates that both authors use novel narrative techniques – such as temporal disruption, embodied metaphors and fragmented memory – to create an image of the psychological and social implications of ambiguous loss. These texts illustrate how women’s identities become contested places where personal trauma is intertwined with collective memory and political resistance. Through close reading of texts and interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, this research suggests that these stories are not solely accounts of suffering but also serve as epistemic forms of resistance that challenge the official discourse on the Kashmir conflict. The findings contribute to understanding how literature preserves marginalized experiences and expands trauma theory beyond Western contexts This article highlights how concepts like ‘half-widow’ and ‘half mother’ represent liminal identities that resist traditional categories while creating new forms of female agency within the framework of limitations. In the context of war, this study highlights the importance of women’s narratives in documenting the impact of conflict and preserving cultural memory.