“This dense and useful book highlights and reflects upon the narrative strategies employed in such storytelling to gain both audiences and empathy. … by offering this timely overview of life writing by young women activists from the Global South, Martinez Garcia has pried open a door that has long needed opening.” (Meg Jensen, Biography, Vol. 46 (2), 2023)
This book is a timely study of young women’s life writing as a form of human rights activism. It focuses on six young women who suffered human rights violations when they were girls and have gone on to become activists through life writing: Malala Yousafzai, Hyeonseo Lee, Yeonmi Park, Bana Alabed, Nujeen Mustafa, and Nadia Murad. Their ongoing life-writing projects diverge to some extent, but all share several notable features: they claim a testimonial collective voice, they deploy rights discourse, they excite humanitarian emotions, they link up their context-bound plight with bigger social justice causes, and they use English as their vehicle of self-expression and self-construction. This strategic use of English is of vital importance, as it has brought them together as icons in the public sphere within the last six years. New Forms of Self-Narration is the first ever attempt to explore all these activists’ life-writing texts side by side, encompassing both the written andthe audiovisual material, online and offline, and taking all texts as belonging to a unique, single, though multifaceted, project.
