The Silenced Subjectivities in I Am Malala and Red, White and Muslim: An Interpretative Analysis of Two Muslim Women’s Memoirs

Abstract

This paper draws upon the theory of subjectivity of Muslim women as enunciated by Saba Mahmood in her seminal work Politics of Piety. Grounding our analysis in her work, we critically engage with two selected memoirs I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban and Red, White and Muslim: My Story of Belief. Both books are written by Muslim women who are from two different locations; Pakistan and America. Via their memoirs, we probe into the kinds of representation the central characters exhibit and how these texts employ the ideas of subjectivity and agency. Our position is that the subjectivity and agency of Muslim women, as depicted and endorsed in these memoirs, is more in accordance with secular neoliberal paradigm. When a secularist model is employed as a yardstick to measure Muslim women’s agency, it makes her appear subjugated or oppressed. Representations are then curtailed within two extremes: that of a distressed damsel in need of liberation or a modern, chic woman who is empowered and not much different from her enlightened sisters in the West. In each case, the coveted ideal is the secularist, neoliberal model of what constitutes an agentic and free woman. This portrayal, we have attempted to argue, leaves much to be desired. It undermines the agency and subjectivity of women who opt for a more religious and more confined existence. Such women are deemed conservative and unenlightened because visibility in communal, public places is not their preference. Thus, this paper signals towards a need for a more nuanced portrayal of Muslim women.

Keywords: Memoirs, Muslim women, secularism, subjectivity, agency