Embodied Pain: Gender Violence and Trauma in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Narrative Ms Sathya Pramode, Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English Dr. C. Chamundeshwari, Associate Professor, Department of English, School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,

Gender-based violence does not omit any gender, as it is based primarily on the concept of power. The idea is also not limited to just the physical unleashing of violence but includes the psychological aspects as well. Women in postcolonial spaces have been often called doubly or even triply marginalized, owing to their gender and race. Tsitsi Dangarembga’s representation of women from the Zimbabwean space through her novels offers insights into African women's condition in a postcolonial context. The focus is not just on the violence inflicted on women through the institution of marriage or other forms of male-figure-related aggression, but also on the struggles faced by women to merely survive using their own independence. The paper will examine the trilogy of novels by Tsitsi Dangarembga- Nervous Conditions, The Book of Not, and This Mournable Body by locating the intersectionality between gender and race. The study would be based on the theoretical framework of gender, trauma, and postcolonialism with the primary focus on women’s conditions in a hostile society.

Keywords: Gender violence, trauma, postcolonialism, marginalization, intersectionality