Am I a Victim? Agency and Sex Trafficking Narratives in Contemporary South Asian Literature

This thesis examines the depiction of sex trafficking survivors’ agency in contemporary South Asian literature. Recent sex trafficking fiction tends to focus on victimising narratives, presenting protagonists with little or no agency. I argue that the violence that comes with being trafficked affects these characters in various psychological and physical ways, but this does not mean that they are without agency and interiority.

The texts analysed in this thesis represent the experiences of survivors from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and include the short story ‘Douloti the Bountiful’ (1995) by Mahasweta Devi, the novella Song of Gulzarina (2016) by Tariq Mehmood, the novels The Colour of Our Sky (2017) by Amita Trasi, and Girls Burn Brighter (2018) by Shobha Rao, and the stage play Dukhini (performed in 1997) by Shahid Nadeem. Drawing on trauma theory and feminist and postcolonial perspectives, this thesis considers the effects of relocation and sexual violence on the voice, interiority and agency of sex trafficking survivors in fiction and drama. I also show how narrative techniques such as characterisation, point of view and point of ending impact the portrayal of power, individuality, and trauma for these characters.

The second part of the thesis is a novel titled Her: Unwritten, which focuses on the experiences of a girl from a working-class family in Karachi, Pakistan, from her teenage years to adulthood. Her desires to go to a private school while supporting her family are explored, however she is trafficked before pursuing them. To highlight the representations of agency and challenge her victimisation during and after trafficking, her thoughts and experiences while being trapped in a brothel in Lahore and then being transported to Spain are shown through flashbacks and first-person point of view. Her mental and physical state post-escape is also shown through this.