A recent York University graduate, Donna Akbari’s award-winning essay—The Weight of What We Carry: Shame as Survival in Two Histories of Oppression—explores how shame functions as a survival mechanism in Baluta by Daya Pawar and Coolie Woman by Gaiutra Bahadur. As an Iranian-Canadian and the daughter of immigrants, Donna found deep resonance in the themes of inherited silence, intergenerational trauma, and the burden of carrying histories others would rather forget.
Vikrant Dadawala, her course director for EN3430 (South Asian Literature), nominated Akbari for the award, noting how she convincingly demonstrates that these texts can be read together, united by their shared engagement with shame as a “dynamic force” that “moves through the body, the family, and the archive.”
Outside academia, Donna writes under the author name Donna Ferdowsi on her blog, Diary of a 4’11 Girl, and is currently preparing to publish her first poetry collection—a book exploring womanhood, the complicities of love, identity and the immigrant experience. Her work bridges the personal and the political, amplifying silenced voices and reimagining the way memory is carried through literature.
“Her paper is a brilliant work of undergraduate scholarship that takes on two difficult works of literature, noting that her arguments have the potential to add to our understanding of how literatures engages with intergenerational trauma,” said Professor Dadawala.
YCAR welcomes nominations for the awards throughout the academic year. Submissions for the 2025–26 academic year should be received by 27 April 2026.