![]() ![]() ![]() This paper is based on three selected novels entitled Does My Head Look Big In This? (2005), Ten Things I Hate About Me (2006), and Where The Streets Had A Name (2008) written by Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979), a Palestinian-Egyptian Australian Muslim diasporic writer. In this way, it will be argued, the protagonist of Abdel-Fattah’s novel is not only “challenged” by anti-Muslim stereotypes, she “challenges back.” Rather than engage in a patient, rational, and didactic discussion with what are essentially impatient and irrational representations, Does My Head Look Big in This? adopts a strategy of parody-an exaggerated, often funny, redeployment of anti-Muslim stereotypes-in order to expose the ignorance wherein they originate. ![]() Central to this discussion is theoretical work by Judith Butler, whose notion of parody emphasizes the destabilizing effect that parody has for otherwise oppressive images and stereotypes. As will be argued here, stereotypes of Muslims and, in particular, Muslim women present not only challenges for the novel’s central protagonist but also sites for her intervention. ![]() This article explores anti-Muslim stereotypes and strategies for combating them as presented in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s first novel for young readers, Does My Head Look Big in This? First published in 2005, in the wake of terrorist attacks in the United States and Bali, the novel focuses on the everyday life of a second-generation Palestinian teenager who decides, as she puts it, to wear the hijab “full time” in a predominantly non-Muslim school in Australia. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |