FROM FRAGMENTED SELF TO RECONSTRUCTED IDENTITY: TRAUMATIC MEMORY, RECOVERY, AND POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH IN NADIA HASHIMI’S SELECTED NOVELS

Abstract

The present study examines the relationship between traumatic memory, fragmented selfhood, recovery, and posttraumatic growth in Nadia Hashimi’s selected novels. It explores how traumatic experiences disrupt continuity of identity and how processes of remembering, confrontation, meaning-making, agency, relationships, and reconnection with the past contribute to the reconstruction of self. Drawing on trauma theory, narrative identity perspectives, and posttraumatic growth theory, the study employs a qualitative interpretive approach to comparatively analyse The Pearl That Broke Its Shell (2014), When the Moon Is Low (2015), and Sparks Like Stars (2021). The analysis demonstrates that traumatic memory is represented not merely as an individual psychological disturbance but as an experience shaped by gendered oppression, war, displacement, family separation, cultural memory, and historical violence. Across the narratives, trauma produces fractured identities by disrupting autonomy, belonging, relational continuity, and the coherence of personal memory. Recovery, however, is represented through diverse and non-linear processes rather than as a uniform movement toward resolution. Resistance and self-assertion, adaptation and relational resilience, and confrontation with suppressed memories emerge as significant modes through which fragmented identities are reinterpreted. The findings further indicate that posttraumatic growth is expressed through increased agency, renewed relationships, expanded self-understanding, meaning-making, and reconstructed belonging, while traumatic suffering continues to remain part of the protagonists’ identities. The study therefore argues that Hashimi represents identity reconstruction as an ongoing negotiation with the past rather than a return to a pre-traumatic self. By bringing traumatic memory, identity fragmentation, recovery, and posttraumatic growth into a comparative framework, the study demonstrates how literary narratives can represent the complex processes through which individuals reinterpret traumatic histories and develop new forms of self-understanding.