Embodied Trauma and Gendered Memory: Representations of Violence Against Women in Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Abstract

This paper explores the representation of embodied trauma and gendered memory in Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World, focusing on the protagonist Tequila Leila's experiences of sexual violence, familial betrayal, and societal exclusion. The novel constructs a posthumous narrative that preserves the sensory and psychological imprints of trauma within a gendered body, foregrounding memory as both individual testimony and collective resistance. Shafak challenges patriarchal silencing by granting narrative agency to a marginalised female voice, thus reconfiguring trauma as a space of witness and reclamation. Through its fragmented temporality and affective realism, the text interrogates the socio-cultural mechanisms that perpetuate violence against women, ultimately affirming the ethical power of storytelling in confronting gendered histories of pain.