The Weight of What We Carry: Shame as Survival in Two Histories of Oppression
| dc.contributor.author | Akbari, Donna | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-09-23T19:49:37Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-09-23T19:49:37Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-03-21 | |
| dc.description | This essay won the Department of English’s 3000-level Essay Prize in 2025. The Department of English awards prizes for the best essay written in courses at each of the four year levels. Faculty members may nominate students for this award. | |
| dc.description.abstract | This essay argues that in Daya Pawar’s Baluta and Gaiutra Bahadur’s Coolie Woman, shame is not just a residue of oppression but an inherited survival technology. Across caste and indenture, it organizes speech, desire, kinship, and mobility while acting as strategic quiet that protects the vulnerable. Through close readings, it pairs Pawar’s internalized caste shame with Bahadur’s reclamation of “silence” as intentional protection. Narrating shame—via autobiography and archival recovery—converts stigma into testimony, proposing “learned shame” as a transhistorical tool repurposed into resistance. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/10315/43149 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | Shame as survival | |
| dc.subject | Intergenerational trauma | |
| dc.subject | Caste and indenture | |
| dc.subject | Autobiography and archival investigation | |
| dc.subject | Silence and resistance | |
| dc.title | The Weight of What We Carry: Shame as Survival in Two Histories of Oppression | |
| dc.type | Other |