Gender Identity Internalization and the Aftereffects in Selina Hossain’s “Leaving Home” (“†g‡q‡jvKUv”): An Analysis - Laizu Nasrin, PhD

Gender Identity Internalization and the Aftereffects in Selina Hossain’s “Leaving Home” (“†g‡q‡jvKUv”): An Analysis Professor Dr. Laizu Nasrin Department of English Jahangirnagar University Savar, Dhaka-1342 E-mail:laizu@juniv.edu Abstract: Selina Hossain is the most-known female writer of the present-day Bangladesh who writes novels and short stories in Bangla. To make her works accessible to the international readers, some of her fictional writings have been translated into English as well as a few other languages of the world. This article makes a gender-centric study of one such seminal short story by Selina Hossain, entitled “†g‡q‡jvKUv”, which has been translated by Antara Dev Sen as “Leaving Home”. How the protagonist of the story, Tarabanu, internalizes her gender identity in her early life through adopting the socio-culturally prevalent gender norms and gender roles, and what effects this internalized gender identity has on her own life then and later on are the issues of detailed discussion of the essay. The dissection of the story is done keeping the life-story of the underclass old woman protagonist, Tarabanu, at the focal point of the analysis, providing necessary references and discussions on different relevant concepts like gender identity, its internalization process, and the aftereffects of the rigid internalization of a secondary gender identity, i.e. female identity. Keywords: Underclass woman, gender identity, internalization, gender norm, gender role, aftereffect