While I was clicking here and there on BBC News online yesterday, I happened upon the headline, "Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl." The first set of diary entries are prefaced with the following:
"Private schools in Pakistan's troubled north-western Swat district have been ordered to close in a Taleban edict banning girls' education. Militants seeking to impose their austere interpretation of Sharia law have destroyed about 150 schools in the past year. Five more were blown up despite a government pledge to safeguard education, it was reported on Monday. Here a seventh grade schoolgirl from Swat chronicles how the ban has affected her and her classmates. The diary first appeared on BBC Urdu online."
The girl reports in a 15 January entry that she is publishing her writing under the pen name 'Gul Makai.' The diary format is a traditionally feminized form of writing and demonstrates explicitly the overlap of private/public, personal/political.
No comments:
Post a Comment