Survival and Transformation through Hope: A reading of Koirala Koirala’s Cancer Narrative Healed

Abstract

Situations of disaster, defeat, disease and calamities are normal incidents which are taken by certain people, as challenges and chances for life’s progression. To overcome the hurdles, goals are to be set along with sustainable hope. Charles Snyder’s article, Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind, published in 2002 explains that goals can be attained by high-hope individuals through a cyclical occurrence of pathways supported by agency thinking. The present article seeks to close - read Healed (2018), a cancer memoir of Manisha Koirala, applying hope theory of Snyder, to demonstrate how ovarian cancer in the body of Koirala is defeated through various pathways introduced and reinforced by agency thinking or self-motivational utterances, to reach the point of survival. This also attempts to understand how Koirala identifies and uses the traits like Optimism, Aloneness, Determination, Self-esteem, and Self-discovery to establish various pathways supported by the motivational thoughts that leads to achieve the target of recovery. The article also brings forth the transformation of Koirala from a film actor to a social activist working for women’s rights. This is a journey from self to society. It also reflects on how the narrative structure and images used in the text has been constructed to transform the text into a survival memoir.