‘This is my story’: the reclaiming of girls’ education discourses in Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography

Walters, Rosie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2649-7065 2019. ‘This is my story’: the reclaiming of girls’ education discourses in Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography. Smith, Ann, ed. The Girl in the Text, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books,

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Abstract

The cause of girls’ education in developing countries has received unprecedented attention from international organizations, politicians, transnational corporations, and the media in recent years. Much has been written about the ways in which these seemingly emancipatory campaigns reproduce historical discourses that portray women in former colonies as in need of rescue by the West. However, to date little has been written about the ways in which young women and girls’ education activists represent themselves. In this article I analyze I Am Malala, the autobiography of Pakistani girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai, written for her own age group. Using a feminist, poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis, it considers the way in which Yousafzai negotiates and challenges discourses around young women, Pakistan, and Islam. I conclude that a truly emancipatory understanding of girls’ rights would look not to the words and policies of powerful organizations but, rather, to young women themselves.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Department of Politics and International Relations (POLIR)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman J Political Science > JZ International relations
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
ISBN:	9781789203233
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2022 10:33
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/132632

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