THE INTERGENERATIONAL WOUND: LOCATING POSTCOLONIAL TRAUMA IN THE BODY AND SCARRED TERRITORY OF FERYAL ALI GAUHAR'S AN ABUNDANCE OF WILD ROSES

Abstract

Focusing on the black mountains region of Pakistan, this paper employs postcolonial trauma and memory studies to critically analyze Feryal Ali Gauhar’s An Abundance of Wild Roses. The paper argues that the novel operates as a critical archive, exposing the intergenerational persistence of historical violence in the global south. Moving beyond previous ecofeminist interpretations, this study demonstrates how historical forces—colonial legacies, political upheavals, and the systemic 'violence of extraction'—manifest not merely as external events but as internalized psychological and corporeal wounds. The research focuses on two primary sites where trauma is inscribed and repressed: the female body, serving as a locus of inherited pain and silence, and the scarred territory of the rural landscape. Gauhar utilizes a fragmented narrative structure and non-linear chronology—the formal hallmarks of trauma writing—to mirror the community's splintered memory and its inability to fully process the past. By examining the novel's epistemology of silence and the symbolic linkage between the violated body and the degraded land, this paper illustrates how systemic violence results in a pervasive state of unprocessed grief. Ultimately, the study contributes to postcolonial trauma scholarship by asserting that for communities in the global south, achieving genuine decolonization requires by an ethical confrontation with repressed historical memories and recognition of the land itself as a traumatized witness demanding remembrance and healing.