Women Voicing Their Pain

Women Voicing Their Pain

During the recent international anti-racism meeting, the World Conference Against Racism that was held in Durban, South Africa, the voices of victims of racism and its consequences were heard from around the world. These voices came in various forms, both written and verbal, and were communicated both directly and indirectly. The way that pain is voiced around the world, such as the variety and method of communicating pain, can affect how the audience understands the author’s “wound”. It can affect how genuinely pain is conveyed and also how the pain applies to other victims. One of the voices heard during the World Conference was that of Diya Muliah, an Indonesian woman working as a maid in Malaysia. Diya’s story is a moving account about how poverty combined with immigration policies can create a negative situation for women not only in Malaysia, but all around the world. But is Diya’s writing meant to be a source of healing for her or others, and to what extent is her writing actually considered healing?

Diya is working as a maid for a Chinese Malaysian woman to support her family in Indonesia. After working for a while in Malaysia, Diya’s boss asks for her passport. Not knowing any better, Diya hands it over, not knowing the potential ramifications of not having her documents with her at all times. After a while, Diya’s boss begins to abuse her both verbally and physically. “She screamed at me constantly, grabbed me by my blouse and shoved me around roughly”, recalls Diya. She withholds Diya’s wages and claims that she will be paid bi-annually, which is an obvious lie. Diya describes these abuses vividly in an effort to describe the “wound” she is trying to show the world.

The fact that Diya...

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... context in which her pain is voiced (the World Conference Against Racism, in South Africa) puts a lot at stake for her writing. Whether she conveys her wound effectively could possibly determine whether legislation to help her and others would be enacted. Aside from the global repercussions of her text (however weighty they may be), it is also important to analyze Diya’s attempts to heal herself and others through her writing. While she does effectively communicate her pain, she does not show that this communication will lead to the healing of her wounds. The audience is left feeling that her wounds are as open and fresh as before she began writing. Diya situates this “woundedness” in a global setting in which changes could possibly be enacted to help her and other female victims of racism, but she fails to heal her own emotional scars and arguably those of others.