Political prison narratives express an extremely delicate and totally distinctive experience that has an unforgettable effect on the heart. Yenna Wu defines political prisoners as the prisoners who are "incarcerated due to their active and passive involvement in political activities [and] prisoners of conscience associated with non-political activities" ("Introduction" 1). Political prisoners' mechanisms of resistance and strategies of survival differ from one to another, yet they exhibit some affinities because of the remarkable commonalities of global political prison experience. The aim of this paper is to present a comparison of the aesthetics of resistance and survival employed by female political prisoners as presented in Malika Oufkir's Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail (1999) and Alicia Kozameh's Steps under Water (1996). To investigate the ways in which female political prisoners maintain their sanity and humanity, this paper is based on Elaine Scarry's analysis of torture and Judith Herman's study of trauma.