Voices of War Heroines: Sexual Violence, Testimony, and the Bangladesh Liberation War

Examining the experiences of the wartime rape survivors of Bangladesh from the perspective of social theory of trauma, this book reads the testimonies of war heroines as documented by Neelima Ibrahim (1921-2002) and argues that, even though their trauma was not represented in a manner to invoke collective recognition and proper commemoration, these women defied to be branded as 'victims.' They fought back to regain their lost honor and managed to cope with trauma, and in the process, learned to stand up as brave heroes, resisting all odds. With this book, I am honoring my debt to the women warriors, who wrote and rode a nation's trauma in/through their bodies.