Narrative Transmission and Gender Trauma in Broken Strings by Aurelie Moereman

Wiwinda Lestari; M Afifulloh; Diana Anggraeni

doi:10.61276/loqula.v4i2.82

Authors

Wiwinda Lestari Universitas Bangka Belitung
M Afifulloh Universitas Bangka Belitung
Diana Anggraeni Universitas Bangka Belitung

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.61276/loqula.v4i2.82

Abstract

Sexual violence against adolescent girls is an ongoing human rights issue. Survivors' memoirs, published digitally, are shaping public discourse on grooming and gender-based violence in Indonesia. However, Aurelie Moeremans's work, Broken Strings: Fragments of a Stolen Youth (2025), has not yet received in-depth, sustained literary analysis. This article examines how gender-based violence is constructed and conveyed through narrative strategies in the memoir. The article focuses on the protagonist’s subordination within heteronormative power relations and the text’s function as an affective medium that facilitates affiliative reader engagement. Combining Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, this study uses a descriptive-interpretive qualitative approach. It also employs a close reading of the memoir and secondary reception materials from Indonesian feminist media. The analysis reveals three interconnected dimensions: the normalization of gender-based compliance and romanticization as mechanisms of coercive control, a transition from silenced to reflective subjectivity, and narrative fragmentation, retrospection, and direct address that transform personal trauma into shared meaning. Conclusion: This memoir serves a dual function: it is both a testimony and a discursive space in which gender-based violence is critically articulated in digital form. Additionally, it fills a gap in academic research on digital memoirs by survivors in Indonesia by combining the Butler-Hirsch framework.

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