Walking wounds: Narrating trauma and affect in Sanam Wazir’s The Kaurs of 1984

This article acknowledges Sanam Sutirath Wazir's book The Kaurs of 1984 as a crucial voice in highlighting the plight of Sikh women who were deeply impacted by the anti-Sikh violence of 1984. Wazir has initiated an ethical imperative to register the unacknowledged or repressed narratives of rapes. Responding to Wazir's book, the article also investigates the affective trauma of narration and the unsettling involved in the reading process. Wazir's documentation of Sikh women's experiences of 1984 can be read in Roxane Gay's terms as opening a wound and cleaning it to allow for collective healing.