Selena Truong ASTU 100A

Throughout my first year here at UBC, I’ve been invited into thinking about a variety of new and challenging concepts. Particularly in my ASTU course, something that I have learned and that has strongly resonated with me is the concept of framing. Framing, as defined by Jiwani and Young, is the process of “selecting and highlighting” certain aspects of “events or issues” to “promote a particular interpretation” to an audience (902). Although hegemonic framing has the power to further stigmatize and discriminate against marginalized groups, there is a potential to resist it through counter frames. I discussed this concept in depth in my research paper in relation to Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss, in which the author, Maggie de Vries uses this memoir to counter the dominant framework that stigmatizes sex workers. However, I see framing as continuing to be relevant now as the influential power of media is rapidly on the rise in our technologically advanced and globalizing world.

In this blog post, therefore, I will be looking at a Huffington’s Post article by Nick Wing, “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims”, in which allows me to address an aspect of framing that I have not talked about before. In 2006, Jiwani and Young wrote about the aspect framing in newspapers, but as more of our world continues to log onto the World Wide Web, local news is able to and often times does branch out globally. Thus, this article that I will be discussing demonstrates not only how the media’s framing of stigmatized groups is reaching and influencing a wider audience on the global scale, but how these audiences are also able to resist these dominant narratives by responding immediately to the issue on the same public platform.

Wing, opens his article by introducing the problematic case of Michael Brown’s death. Michael Brown was “unarmed, black teenager” who was “fatally shot” by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in the summer of 2014. Wing explains that the nature of this case, of black men being killed in this manner, was not uncommon. He continues by explaining that after news of the teen’s death broke, “media-watchers carefully followed the narratives that news outlets began crafting” about Brown and this incident (Wing). Michael Brown’s case became a concern on the global scale as it was kept track of on international news channels and the internet. For example, Wing notes that people on Twitter started wondering how they would be represented or framed if they were killed. They thus created the hashtag, #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, in which users of this hashtag would post photos side-by-side to testify to the “power that news outlets wield” in influencing a certain interpretation based on the images they select (Wing). Technology has become a tool that supports the agency of viewers that allows them to take action from anywhere in the world to fight against and counter hegemonic frameworks in the media.

Source: Screenshot from Wing’s article

Wing highlights the tweet (on the left) from Twitter user, @SvmmieArnold, which emphasizes the media’s mistreatment of black victims as it is “often harsher than it is of whites suspected of crimes” (Wing). He does this by comparing the photos and news headlines of Michael Brown to that of a white teen. The media’s hegemonic framing through selecting of a picture of Brown in which satisfies the public’s perception of a “delinquent” or “gangster” attached with a headline that suggests violence on his part leads Michael Brown to seem like what Jiwani and Young would call a “blameworthy victim” (901). In contrast, the white suspect is framed in a way that reinforces the hegemonic dominance of white men through an image of him wearing a suit and being praised for being a “brilliant science student” even though he was a murderer.

This Twitter user’s actions, along with others who spoke up about this issue of unjust representation, demonstrate the capacity for us to take responsibility as global citizens to resist the hegemonic frames of power structures that impose and influence discrimination onto certain groups. Through current technology and the growing interconnectedness of societies, individuals are able to create counter narratives on a daily basis by identifying an issue, bringing awareness to it, and by standing by the victims and insisting on recreating the way their identities are narrated and represented and publically understood.

The content that I have explored in this ASTU 100 course and specifically the concept of framing and counter framing, has helped me understand the weighted importance of the way we represent ourselves and others. For the choices made in this process can have heavy impacts on social and political scales. An important aspect that I have taken away from this course is that it is essential that we look at representations of groups that are constructed by dominant power sources with a critical eye, as they are often framed to fill a political purpose. On a personal level, I have also decided for myself that I should not only learn to notice these hegemonic misrepresentations of certain groups, but, as I see myself as a “global citizen”, I should do my best to take part in resisting them.

Works Cited

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing And Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality In News Discourse.” Canadian Journal Of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917. ProQuest, search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/219564084/fulltextPDF/3CC1DA255ACB49D0PQ/1?accountid=14656. Accessed 19 Nov. 2016.

Wing, Nick. “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims.” The Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/media-black-victims_n_5673291.html%20. Accessed 7 April 2017.

In a globalizing world, racial and nationalistic identities are more frequently becoming compounded and dynamic. In this blog, I will be discussing a submission from, “The Race Card Project”, an archival site created by Michele Norris, in which invites Americans to add to the conversation about race and their experiences. I will be discussing this submission in relation to Fred Wah’s concept and commentary of a “hyphenated identity”.

Wah explains in his biotext, Diamond Grill, that a hyphenated identity, such as being “ChineseHYPHENCanadian”, is a “real problem for multiculturalism”, for people usually perceive it as “a sign of impurity”. He adds that oftentimes the hyphen is “erased”, and people are identified as only one part of their identity, suggesting that the “parts” are “not equal to the whole” (178). For example, Wah is Canadian, but of both Swedish and Chinese decent; throughout Diamond Grill he explains his struggle of not being seen as Chinese in Chinese communities and for being seen as Chinese and discriminated against by people in white communities. The “inbetweenness” (179) and the idea that the hyphen places one in a “no-man’s land”, or is a “stain”, is solely determined by one’s perception that one must be undivided in order to be “whole” (178). The issue is not the hyphen itself; the hyphen connects people to the multiple layers of their identity. However, as Wah mentioned, it is a “problem for multiculturalism” (178) simply because of the intolerance that some have for an identity that does not follow the typical binary rules in which segregate us.

However, Fred Wah’s struggle is not uncommon. Many other people with hyphenated identities are having to deal with racism and ignorance. For example, in a submission on “The Race Card Project”, Shagun Doshi, a woman from Naperville, Illinois, explains that although she was born and raised in America and sees herself as American, people continuously only see her for how she appears on the outside (Norris). Consequently, she is often asked, “No, where are you really from?” when she answers American instead of Indian. However, she explains that not only white people made the assumptions, but Indian people as well as they would start to speak to her in Hindi, a language she does not understand. Although the solution to this problem may seem simple, it is not. Another submission on “The Race Card Project”, by Brianna Leander from Texas, suggests a solution as she writes, “I don’t see color, only culture” (Norris). However, this does not solve the ambiguity of certain identities, for culture can be hyphenated as well. In Doshi’s case, she explains that her Indian culture “influences a lot of [her] values and beliefs” but that the American culture she has been brought up in “also attributes for [her] personality and views” (Norris). Doshi not only is hyphenated through her race being “100% brown” and her home country being the U.S., but she is hyphenated in having an Indian-American culture as well. Identities are complex and each part constitutes who we are as a whole. Therefore, the issue is not having a multifaceted identity, but being reduced by others who see the hyphen as a “mi-nus mark, not an equal sign” (Wah 179).

With the frequent mixes of race and culture in present time, it is often no longer easy to define an identity. Therefore, it is important that we become accepting of parts of a hyphenated identity by respecting them as equivalent to each whole. However, with all said, perhaps the best solution to this racism and ignorance is simply to not assume, but ask.

–If you are interested in this topic, I urge you to check out Merial’s blog post, which also discusses Fred Wah’s concept of a “hyphenated identity”.

Works Cited

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Landmark edition. NeWest Press, 2008. Print.

Norris, Mellisa. The Race Card Project. theracecardproject.com. Accessed 19 March 2017.

Humans of New York (HONY) was initially Brandon Stanton’s photography project but eventually involved into much more. It is now an archival site that portrays mini biographies of people along the street in order to get a glimpse of the individualities of people within a larger group. By bringing the personal to the public, HONY works to show how our small individual lives and characteristics make up a large community. HONY focuses their stories on people who narrate stories about working towards social change or being change makers, being victims of social inequality, or simply coming to an epiphany or telling an inspirational aspect of their lives. However, as much as an overlooking description of these stories may seem as though they are all “fluff”, in reality, they can be quite the opposite. At times, HONY reminds us that life narratives aren’t always about pleasing the audience and doing the “ethical” thing—they are about reflecting the reality of our lives, even if telling the truth isn’t comforting. By doing this, they are contributing to an archive that works to portray a group of people of a certain time and place. Archives help us understand communities of the past, and in this work, even the unsettling stories have value for our attempts to understand the social problems that exist at a certain time. A story that I will examine out of HONY is one that exemplifies the type of story that is unsettling to the promoted mainstream and “ideal” values that exist in modern day culture, but is frighteningly quite spot on to the underlying values of society that are prominent and exist, but are unacknowledged and often brushed aside from our “perfect ideals”.

This post that I will discuss is accompanied with a faceless picture of a woman’s hands resting together on her knees as she sits on a bench in what looks like a subway station in New York. She is Caucasian and wearing black nail polish and the tone of the photo seems cold and tense. In her biography, she explains that her mother has been “really sick for 50 to 60 percent of [her] life” as she ended up in a psychiatric ward after her husband left and had breast cancer twice. The woman explains that this was a lot of pressure on her as she was her mother’s only child and she would have to come home from school to “pick [her] mother up off the bathroom floor” instead of playing at the playground with friends. The woman continues to explain that as she is newly married, her mother is still very sick and reliant on her as she is expected by her mother to do a list of errands for her every day after work and to call and visit her in the hospital every few days. The common and idealist expectation that the dominant society would have at this point would be that the mother is very appreciative of her daughter and that the daughter is happy to be there for her mother who raised her. However, the woman explains that if she does not visit her mother for a few days her mother will call her “selfish” and tell her to not return. The woman is starting a family, and states that she “[doesn’t] know what [she] [wants] to happen” but she is at the point where she would “like some freedom to live [her] life” (Stanton).

As a reader, I had some conflicting thoughts. As I was able to sympathize with the woman who narrated, I understood her desire for some “freedom”. However, I found that my sympathy for her was unsettling. With my own personal values and the “ideal” values for our dominant society, it would seem selfish to abandon the person who raised you simply because you’re starting not to need them anymore. However, this also makes me reflect on the individualistic values of the West in general. In North America in this day in age, society and media often put value on the “self”. This, therefore, as an archive, allows for reflection on this individualistic value that is present at this time. This woman’s biography for HONY is an example of a result of this value and how it affects specific people’s choices and thinking during this time period. If it weren’t for the unsettling honesty of this woman’s narrative in the archive, and for the archive in general, the only aspect of society that future generations would be able to look back on to analyze society would be the sugar coated, idealistic and distorted reality that is presented in the media instead of what is truly representative of what makes up the collective values and actions of a community.

Work Cited

Stanton, Brandon. Humans of New York. www.humansofnewyork.com/post/154692913631/my-mom-has-been-really-sick-for-50-to-60-percent. Accessed 1 February 2017.

In Marjane’s Satrapi’s memoir, Persepolis, Satrapi stresses the issue of the invisibility of women in Iran during the Islamic Revolution in 1979. She stresses that despite whether women choose to rebel or conform to the Islamic Revolution, women in Iran are only seen by men under the two following categories, both of which erase their identity as equal citizens to men. Women are acceptable if they are well-behaved conformists to the fundamentalist Islamic regime. However, in this process they are required to cover their bodies and they have restrictions on their behaviour, which causes them to be invisible. On the other hand, women who are deviant to the Islamic regime in such ways that they allow their hair to be shown and protest against the revolution are not only are disrespected, but are silenced.

As shown in Persepolis, Marji (Satrapi’s younger self) is raised with a feminist and progressive upbringing. Being regularly exposed and included in her family’s analytical and traumatic conversations about the war against Iraq and the Islamic Revolution as a child, Marji is informed and aware of the injustices in Iran at a very young age. As a result, Marji’s will to be “an educated, liberated woman” (73) is ingrained in her personality from her youth and is reinforced by her mother who, when Marji was only ten, tells Marji that “she should start learning to defend her rights as a woman” (76) by attending a demonstration against the Islamic Revolution.

Satrapi fights to make the “hidden visible” (Chute 106). From wearing forbidden jeans and jewelry to school as a child (Satrapi 143), to writing the memoir itself, she fights to have the voice of women heard. With an extra leap, Satrapi goes to great lengths (that I will soon describe) to ensure that the images and content of her stories are not influenced by any other source other than her memory (Chute 106). By doing this Satrapi is emphasizing the worthiness of her voice and perspective as a woman.

As noted above, Marji’s feminist values are salient in the creation of Persepolis, the graphic narrative and Persepolis, the film. As feminist author, Hilary Chute, opens her article by noting that the New York Times Magazine ran a story on graphic narratives, which stated that they are becoming recognized as respectable literary forms, she points critically at the fact that “graphic narrative work by women” is not included in the article and is ignored (92). The patriarchal system traditionally ignores and silences the voice of women and the invisibility of women is a result of such patterns. However, Chute continues her article by reminding her audience that the graphic novel is not a man’s world and in fact that having a voice in history will not be reserved solely for men (92). Chute describes how Satrapi fights against the invisibility of women by creating a widely known graphic narrative and takes initiative in making sure her voice and point of view in the book and movie are exclusively her own by “[acting] out the physical gestures of each scene of the film to give her animators a physical reference” (106). Chute explains that Satrapi announced that she plays all of the roles, including that of the dog. (106). By drawing her own images for her graphic novel and “inserting her literal, physical body into each frame of the film” (Chute 106), Satrapi takes ownership in the representation of her personal memory and the collective memory of the historical events of the Islamic Revolution and War against Iraq. She thus contributes in using her voice to promote the visibility of the individuality of Iranian women as well as women as powerful narrators of history.

Works Cited

Chute, Hillary. “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis.’” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1/2, 2008, pp. 92–110.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York, NY: Pantheon, 2003.

Chimamanda Adichie’s TEDtalk, “The Danger of a Single Story” illuminates how telling one interpretation of a group of people over and over again contributes to the misunderstanding and generalization of a group of people. Adichie, an African woman, explains her experience of how the telling of the single story of African people from Western literature has created harmful stereotypes and has affected the way African people are treated and perceived in the world.

In this blog post, I will use Adichie’s concept of the danger of a single story and connect it to the issue of the misrepresentation of the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, specifically in Vancouver, BC’s Downtown Eastside in the early 2000’s in the media. Scholars, Yasmin Jiwani and MaryLynn Young, note that these women are portrayed through “hegemonic frame[s]”(903) to the public and essentially are only told through a “single story”. As Adichie states, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete” (Adichie).

Adichie implies that telling a single story over and over again about a people creates a structured way of perceiving and interpreting them. This ultimately creates the stereotypes in which cause consequences a marginalized group. Based only on the detail that the missing and murdered women were sex-workers and that they may have had had drug addictions, they were homogenized and portrayed through hegemonic frames that created their identities to the public simply as “deserving of the mistreatment”, “junkies” and “worthless hookers”(Jiwani and Young 901-904). Through stereotyping and the telling of “incomplete” stories of their lives, sex workers are misjudged and ultimately stripped of the respect they deserve as people. As Adichie explained, if you “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, … that is what they become” (Adichie). The popular media has identified these women as objects in society that have no humane value.

However, Adichie also explains that “[p]ower is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person” (Adichie). In the case of the murdered and missing Indigenous women, as Jiwani and Young reveal throughout the discussion in their article, the upper-class and the media have the power to portray the story of these women to the public (195-112). It is important to acknowledge the inequality of this power as it is the reason for why people of the upper-class such as celebrities who also suffer drug addiction are not portrayed through dehumanizing frames, but portrayed to the public as good people with amazing talents who are going through tough times or are “coping”. The power lies in the privileged class and it is because they have this power that they have the power to be recognized with diversity.

This is where the importance of life narratives comes in. Life narratives, such as the memoir of Sarah de Vries who was one of the murdered and missing women, give the opportunity for the voices of each and every victim to tell their unique story. Personalized stories of experience add to the single story that is told of a marginalized minority group and work to deconstruct stereotypes. For example, the author of Sarah de Vries’ memoir, Maggie de Vries, counters the stereotype of sex workers as victims and that sex-workers and addicts come from bad family backgrounds. Single storytelling makes it impossible to see the missing and murdered women as anything other than the stereotypes that devalue their existence as people. By telling the story of one sex-worker’s life and using Sarah’s own words in her journal entries, Maggie de Vries is humanizing sex-workers as a whole as she gives the chance for privileged and mainstream people to get to know these women personally for their personalities, feelings, hobbies, families and other humane qualities.

Adichie states that “many stories matter” and that even though “stories have been used to dispossess and to malign”, that they can also be used to “empower and humanize” (Adichie). With this said, it is important that as a community we look into the unique life narratives of these murdered and missing women in order to understand their situations and the structural issues such as racism and poverty that put them in these positions in the first place (Jiwani and Young 902). As a community, we should support and give power to the voices of marginalized groups and continue to challenge the power of mainstream media for the sake of making a change in the lives of these people.

Works Cited

Adichie, Chimamanda. “The Dangers of a Single Story.” TED . London. July 2009. YouTube. Web. 2 Nov. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/‌watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg>.

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing And Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality In News Discourse.” Canadian Journal Of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19     Nov. 2016.

Schaffer and Smith, the authors of “Conjuctions,” explain in the section “Other Sites of Narration,” that popular sources such as published life narratives may not the only useful source for addressing human rights issues (19). As they discuss in the previous section, the unpredictability of the reception of published life narratives can lead to both positive and negative outcomes (19). An example of a possible issue is that the popularity of these publications may influence the public to believe that there is no way that there may be flaws in the way an issue is being put forward and as a result, important aspects of an issue may go unmentioned. In order to avoid such negative outcomes, Schaffer and Smith suggest that human rights campaigns take into consideration a variety of sources when searching for voices of oppressed groups (19).

If taken into account for, individual voices from various sources have the power to change certain flaws in human rights campaigns. An example of how one voice could make a difference if it were paid attention to is Belle Jar’s blog entry, “I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter,” posted in The Belle Jar. In this blog post, the author brings about a critical point that the wider public has seemed to miss when addressing the issue of victim blaming when it comes to rape. She explains that the process of asking men to imagine if the victim were their “wives, sisters, or daughters” for the purpose of eliciting their sympathy, is actually detrimental to women’s rights (Jar).

Although this phrase may help men see the event as more “relatable” and thus make them more sympathetic to the situation, what it is really doing is supporting rape culture by inferring that “a woman is only valuable” if she is “loved or valued by a man” (Jar). When speaking about men’s issues, men are not referred to only as husbands, sons, or brothers. Rather, it is more likely that they are simply referred to as people. Thus, not addressing women as “people” is denying their status as a person. Instead of humanizing the victim, this phrase devaluates the woman’s position as an individual person down to a “possession”. The author states that this phrase teaches young girls that if they are not someone’s wife, mother, or (if perhaps they do not have parents in their life) a daughter, that they are not worthy of being protected from rape (Jar). Girls should have value and not be raped, not because of their relationships to men, but because they are people (Jar). Additionally, Jar notes that President Obama has used this phrase in one of his speeches, which proves that even popular and well-recognized sources may miss important perspectives and therefore unintentionally contribute to an aspect of the issue they address.

The issue this author brings up is not common. Therefore this is proof that a variety of voices are essential in order to better address a human rights issue to the public. As important as it is to have a well-known representative and speaker of an issue, it is just as important that a diverse amount of voices are taken into consideration on the same issue to promote constant critical analysis on an issue. With the collaboration of a number of voices from different, popular or unpopular sources, a more well-rounded and progressive solution becomes possible. It is important then, as Schaffer and Smith suggest, that we do not ignore the less prevalent “sites of narration,” (19) for they may be equally as important.

Works Cited

Jar, Belle. “I Am Not Your Wife, Sister or Daughter.” The Belle Jar. N.p., 2014. Web. 06 Nov. 2016.

Schaffer, Kay, and Sidonie Smith. “Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights.” Human Rights and Narrated Lives 27.1 (2004): 19. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Life narratives are tools that can be used to dig deeper to further understand the complexities of our society. In “Reading Autobiographies”, the authors, Smith and Watson suggest strategies to keep in mind while reading autobiographies in order to understand them more thoroughly (235). One strategy that I will be focusing on is looking at identity in the memoir of Ryan Knighton, Cockeyed. I will be using the following strategy suggested by Smith and Watson in order to expand on the significance of identity in this particular narrative and how it affects the world in a larger picture:

Smith and Watson explain that when reading autobiographies and analyzing identity in specific, it is important to find evidence and to think about the significance in how the narrator may have struggled to define their identity (244).

In Cockeyed, Knighton initially does not want to accept the reality that he is slowly becoming blind. Knighton refrains from using his cane to see not only because he is in denial, but because he does not want to be labeled by others as a “blind person”. Knighton, initially afraid of other blind people because he feels as though he is defined and institutionalized by them, finally builds the courage to immerse himself in a blind community and comes to the epiphany that “there is no such thing as a blind person” (217). By being around several blind people at the same time together, he realizes that his disability does not define him into a homogenized group because other than their shared disability, they are all different people and have nothing else in common. After this event, Knighton no longer struggles to identify himself, not as a blind person, but as a unique individual who happens to be blind.

Knighton’s realization connects to the issue of stereotyping in terms of people with disabilities. In today’s society, it seems as though people with disabilities are identified only through their disabilities and limitations, and not by their unique characteristics and personalities as people. In this sense, it seems as though disabled people have been dehumanized by society. Labeling identities of disabled people is an issue that needs to see change. Perhaps if society took a look at disabled people through the perspective of the disabled, they would come to understand that these people are in fact just normal people with unique interests, strengths, personalities, and talents.

In Signifying Life Narratives, the author, Couser, states that “autobiography by definition involves self-representation” and thus allows people with disabilities to take a “high degree of control over their own images”(31). However, Couser adds that because the disabled are often devalued, society is less likely to consider them worthy of autobiography (32). Although learning about the disabled through their perspective may be the solution to the issue of generalized stereotyping that they face, it may take a larger effort; as Couser says, “stigma serves to silence the stigmatized” (32).

Unfortunately, people with disabilities have to deal with ignorant people who assume that all people with disabilities must “look” disabled. These ignorant people are suggesting that the disabled must collectively look abnormal, perhaps by looking sad, lost, ugly, unable and unconfident. Knighton, for example, who is a young (at the time), confident, able, and humorous person, explains in his memoir that people tell him that he does not look like a blind guy. Additionally, Jillayna Adamson, a girl who is deaf, explains a similar experience in her blog post, “But You Don’t Look Disabled…”. At the time, Jillayna was 19, and an ignorant boy told her that she didn’t look disabled because she looked too “beautiful”. The comments that inferred that people with disabilities must all look alike and pitiful dumbfounded both Knighton and Adamson, and likely anyone reading their narratives. Although, perhaps eliciting this reaction from the audience is the purpose of the narrative, as a different perspective may help non-disabled people realize their ignorance.

Overall, through analyzing the aspect of identity in a life narrative, one may observe that through the experience of an individual who struggled with defining his identity, one may come to understand the larger worldly issue that it was caused by: Due to ignorance, society has stripped the unique identities of people with disabilities and have identified them into pitiful, homogenized groups. Alas, it may only be through the disabled’s persistence to speak up and have their voices heard, and through the support of others, that society may come to correct its wrongdoings towards these marginalized individuals.

Works Cited

Couser, G. Thomas. Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 2009. 31-45. Print.

Knighton, Ryan. Cockeyed: A Memoir. New York: Public Affairs, 2006. Print.

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. N.p.: U of Minnesota, 2010. 235-244 Print.

A published life narrative is never bare; texts of autobiographies and memoirs are all wrapped in what Smith and Watson call a “paratextual surround” (99)—the “publication, reception and circulation” in which frames a text (99).

The front cover is the first thing a potential reader sees; the way the text of a life narrative is displayed is important, as it is a great factor in what determines the success of a book. The front cover is an aspect of peritext—a subcategory of paratext, which includes what Gillian Whitlock, author of Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit, explains as “everything between and on the covers” (11).

Whitlock notes that when examining paratext, it is important to think about a number of questions— one specifically being: “how [does what we see] appeal to readers?” (14).

With this question in mind, I will be analyzing the significance of the peritextual aspect of the front cover of I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. As described by Acquarelli et al., a book cover serves “to protect, to decorate, and to promote” (1). Furthermore Acquarelli et al. also state that publishers focus their attention primarily on the aspect of promoting (1). The publishers of Malala’s memoir are American and published it in America for a western audience. A question arises here: What did theses publishers do in order to promote the memoir of an unknown, young girl from Pakistan who wanted to share her story?

The cover of Malala’s memoir consists of a large photograph of her face as she looks into the camera and the bold text of the title is written across underneath her chin. In this photo, Malala’s gaze is peaceful and calm—she looks approachable. However, perhaps it is not only her expression that may appeal to the potential western reader, but her appearance. Malala’s skin is light and glowing, her eyes are large and defined, her eyebrows are neat and symmetrical, her nose and face are quite slim and well proportioned, and almost no blemishes exist on her even complexion. Malala’s face looks beautiful—she fits the American standard of beauty…

Is is this a coincidence?

A year after Malala’s memoir was published, another edition of her story was published—the young reader’s edition. On the cover of this edition, Malala’s face looks recognizably different. On this cover, her skin is slightly darker, her eyes are smaller and not as defined, her nose and face are wider, her eyebrows are not quite symmetrical, and spots and blemishes are visible in her complexion. Malala still looks beautiful, but it is questionable as to whether this version of herself would fit the American standard of beauty.

It seems as though the publishers of Malala’s original memoir saw it necessary to have her face photoshopped. For, in order to increase interest and sales of a memoir of a culturally marginalized, and unknown girl, it is likely that the publishers knew that a western standardized version of a beautiful face would have to be presented in order to appeal to a potential reader and for them to thus want to know who is Malala? The appeal of the reader in the peritext of a book is a vital part of its success and unfortunately, Malala’s true appearance might have had to be sacrificed for this cause.

On another note, perhaps sacrificing Malala’s appearance did have some value in it. She did become famous and she was able to share her story with the western world. With this said, it is likely that because she was already famous and well-known for her cause, it was no longer necessary for her appearance to be altered to fit a shallow standard in her second edition for younger readers.

Maybe it is true that readers should not judge a book by its cover. However, in this case it is clear that analyzing the cover is a completely different story.

Works Cited

Acquarelli et al. “Visual Peritext: Covers and Other Visual Presentation Strategies.” Visual Peritext: Covers and Other Visual Presentation Strategies. N.p., 08 July 2010. Web. 05 Oct. 2016.

Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. N.p.: U of Minnesota, 2010. Print.

Whitlock, Gillian. Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2007. Print.

Yousafzai, Malala, and Christina Lamb. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot By the Taliban. First edition. Little, Brown, & Company, 2013.

Yousafzai, Malala, and Patricia McCormick. I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World. Young readers edition. Little, Brown and Company, 2014.

In the publishing of the book Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, many

aspects of Anne’s diary were manipulated and altered for marketing purposes in

America. The genre of a diary in literature is used to bring authenticity to the

work. A diary by definition is “a book in which you write down your personal

experiences and thoughts each day” (Merriam-Webster). A diary includes your

unfiltered and unedited “reflections [and] feelings” (Merriam-Webster) which

ultimately reflect who you are. However, it is questionable to whether this was

the case for the diary of Anne Frank. The story “of a young female victim” (Ravitis

5) was selected amidst the millions of stories of other victims and published in

America as a memoir of the Holocaust. It was published in America since its

themes “corresponded well to American ideals” (Ravitis 5). Instead of being

published in America as Frank’s original title of her diary, Het Achterhüis [The

House Behind], it was altered to The Diary of a Young Girl in order to publicize

her as “an innocent child distanced from … adult ideology” (Ravitis 5). Due to the

fact that America was in a “time of recuperation, materialism, and dull

conformity” (Ravitis 5), they did not want to promote Frank’s ambitious and

confident view of herself (Ravitis 6). When the diary was planned to be made into

a play, Frank’s father, Otto Frank feared that it would be “rather different from

the real contents of her book” (Stalnaker 15) —and as it turns out, he had all the

right to be. The goal of the production team was to make the “most universal

version … of Anne possible” in order to “meet the social and political constructs

of their target audience” (Stalnaker 16). Instead of being true to the authenticity

of the diary and the reality of a young German Holocaust victim, they made her

character relatable to the “average American citizen of the mid-1950s.” (Stalnaker

16) It seems as though Anne frank has been fabricated into yet another fake

Hollywood star. Twenty-one-year-old actress and model, Millie Perkins played

Anne Frank in the movie “The Diary of Anne Frank” in 1959. It is obvious that the

much older and glamorous girl was used to portray Frank to satisfy the

standards of the American audience. What once was the raw diary of a true

victim of the Holocaust is now a production of entertainment to American culture

norms. When such a raw form of documentation, such as a diary, can be

transformed and projected to us in such deceptive ways, we should really start to

question all information that is displayed to us through literature, productions or

any type of media. Can authenticity truly exist past the process of editing? Was

the narrative of a young girl chosen as the voice of the Holocaust to elicit pathos

from the audience? Was the voice of a child was used due to the common

tendency of interpreting youth as innocent and uncorrupted sources? There is no

way to be sure that the information being presented to us through these tools is

with genuine intention. The way situations are displayed to us plays a major role

in how we perceive information. Ultimately, it is up to us to avoid falling into

naivety by asking questions and being critical about what is placed in front of us.

Works Cited

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 17 Sept. 2016.

Ravits, Martha. “To Work in the World: Anne Frank and American Literary

History.” Women’s Studies 27.1 (1998): 5-6. Web. 17 Sep. 2016.

Stalnaker, Whitney Lewis. “Good at Heart: The Dramatization of the Diary of Anne

Frank and its Influence on American Cultural Perceptions.” Order No.

10115758 Kent State University, 2016. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. 15-16 Web. 17

Sep. 2016.

“The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016.