Acts of Narrative Resistance: Trauma, Survival and Therapy in Sharon Hendry’s Radhika’s Story: Surviving Human Trafficking

Abstract

Unwritten power structures and inequalities had had a propensity to be normalized in the name of race, culture, religion, patriarchy, value systems, economy, etc over the span of several centuries. Human Trafficking, one of the most rapidly growing criminal industries of the 21st century, takes the form of gender based violence when it targets women and girls for the purpose of sex trade. In addition to being a serious violation of human rights, the physical and psychological trauma associated with sex trafficking is devastating. This paper, titled “Acts of Narrative Resistance:  Trauma, Survival and Therapy in Sharon Hendry’s Radhika’s Story: Surviving Human Trafficking”, is a study of the grotesque, habitual and multiple traumas to which Radhika, a young Nepali ‘trafficked girl’ was subjected to. Sharon Hendry, the empathetic biographer bears witness to the testimonial of the survivor and represents the structuralised gender based violence that victimises women and reduces them to just a piece of flesh. As it deliberates on the potential of trauma narratives as an instrument for raising awareness about sex-trafficking, the paper also attempts an exploration of Radhika’s story as one of ultimate survival and resistance against oddities. The act of narrating traumatic lived experiences to an empathetic listener has therapeutic effects on the victim. Radhika’s testimony of her life is not simply a testament to a private life, but a point of conflation between text and life.