URBAN ALIENATION, FEMALE RESISTANCE, MEDIA AND TRAUMA IN IMTIAZ'S KARACHI, YOU'RE KILLING ME!

Abstract

Saba Imtiaz's Karachi, You're Killing Me! (2014) captures the fractured rhythms of urban life in Pakistan's largest metropolis, where the city itself functions as both backdrop and protagonist in a narrative of alienation, resistance, and survival. Through the lens of Ayesha Khan, a young female journalist negotiating the precarious terrain of Karachi's media landscape, the text foregrounds the intersections of trauma, gender, and urban dislocation. The novel situates female resistance within a city marked by violence, corruption, and patriarchal structures, while simultaneously exposing the ways in which media both documents and perpetuates trauma. This article explores how Imtiaz's narrative articulates urban alienation as a lived reality, how female resistance emerges as a counter-discourse to systemic oppression, and how trauma is mediated through both personal experience and collective memory. Drawing on Patricia Hill Collins's theoretical framework of intersectionality, alongside critical insights from Khamsa Qasim, Elizabeth Grosz, Angela Davis, Aniqa Mushtaq, Toqeer Ahmad, Leslie Kern, and Sara Ahmed, the study situates the novel within broader debates on gender, urbanity, and media representation. The article argues that Karachi, You're Killing Me! not only narrates the struggles of a single woman but also illuminates the structural conditions that shape female subjectivity in contemporary South Asian cities. Ultimately, the novel becomes a site where trauma is both narrated and resisted, where the city's violence is confronted through the resilience of female voices, and where media becomes a contested terrain of representation and survival.