Abstract:
The two novels, Mona Enamouri’s A Chat Upon Thames (2014)
and Elif Shafak’s Black Milk (2007), are autobiographical writings
that depict the process of self-representation revealing a
postmodern feminist interest in subject formation. Enamouri, on
one hand, reflects on the self between places and voices revealing a
construction of awareness and self-definition in reaction to external
experiences. Shafak, on the other, interweaves a number of
questions on female body and identity within the contextual
struggle of patriarchical society and intrinsic emotional-personality
struggles. Pregnancy and post-partum depression are discussed in
line with questions of what it means to have a family, construct a
book and determine self-worth. Negotiating a range of feminist
thematic preoccupations with voice, spaces, and body the two
novels unravel the critical function of feminist autobiographies in
constructing the self from “discordant” voices through a dynamic
process of self-representation through creation.
