ABSTRACT
Sexism and gender violence occurring in the Sikh community is hidden or rarely mentioned in public narratives, meaning that women are effectively silenced and left out of the process of healing from racist and sexist violence. How can Sikh women become agents of their own identities within a predominantly hypermasculinist Sikh community in India, and within the global, hetero-normative diasporic spaces, if their experiences are denied narrative space? In reading the poems of Sukhjeet Kaur Khalsa, Sharapal Ruprai, and Rupi Kaur, I argue that my identity as a diasporic Sikh woman impacts the interpretations, as I intend to conduct an intersectional, postcolonial feminist criticism to look at the difficulty of speaking out at a time when attacks against male Sikhs are on the rise. How do private and public narratives intersect in the making of meaning? Postcolonial critical thought seeks to unmask colonialist assumptions in colonial texts, while postcolonial feminist criticism attempts an intersectional approach which keeps in mind the larger political structures and hierarchies of power. Who gets to speak? Whose voice is heard? How is the narrative received?
