TESTIMONIAL NARRATIVE OF THE UNSPEAKABLE CRIMES IN NADIA MURAD’S THE LAST GIRL
Trauma is an unpleasant experience suffered by an individual and or a group of individuals collectively. It is a life-changing event that leaves physical and psychological scars that could influence both explicit and implicit memories in the conscious and subconscious mind. Therefore, traumatic events can occur when previous memories haunt the present state of mind through flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations, disorders, and other means. As a result, the suppressed ghost of the past conjures up mental imagery of locations, people, and items associated with the heinous crime. While some individuals are locked in their traumatic experiences, others may integrate and release them via narration and testimony stories. This is important in making the wound visible and the silence audible. Therefore, as Nadia Murad demonstrated, literature deals with trauma and constructs a bridge of communal solidarity amongst people who share the same society or culture by exposing hideous crimes. The book by Nadia Murad and the co-writer Jenna Krajeski, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and Resistance to the Islamic State (2017), focuses on ISIS sexual assaulters of their Yazidi victims and women’s aspirations for reparative and restorative justice. Between 2014 and 2015, Nadia Murad, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was imprisoned in sexual slavery. Nadia’s historical testimony gave details of the crimes that the ISIS members perpetrated against her and her determination to prosecute them. The study argues that the Yazidi women’s brave decision to come forward assisted rape survivors in breaking the women’s generational silence. They significantly recalled their people’s collective traumatized memory to heal the wounds through verbalizing suffering and testimonial narratives. The author-personal narrator’s experiences with injustices had been investigated using a mix of autobiography, biography, memoir, History, and testimony, and also how the testimonial narrative aids in the act of speaking out against crimes; by giving voice to the silent agony.
Keywords: Nadia Murad, The Last Girl, Trauma, Memory, Collective Traumatized Consciousness, Testimonial Narratives, Resistance.