Category A, Prompt D
Ms. Marvel is a teen struggling with her identity. As a teen girl, with a immigrant Muslim family, she defies all the typical things that come to mind when one thinks of an American comic book superhero. Her identity as a Muslim is permeated throughout the graphic novel as she struggles with it and begins to grow into it and affirm it. The first moment in the book that this is addressed is when Brad and Zoe invite Kamala and Nakie to a party that week. Zoe patronizes Nakia by calling her “Kiki,” which also anglicizes her name, and inviting her to a party that she’s fairly certain she won’t be able to go to. She also assumes she was pressured to wear her hijab by her father, and calls it a headscarf. Her prejudice is shown when she asks if she will be honor killed if she doesn’t wear it, assuming that Muslim culture is misogynistic and violent. She also is condescending when she says “cultures are so interesting,” in a sarcastic way that communicates that she does not find them interesting, while also lumping every culture separate from her one into one group. This comic book subverts the typical American teen narrative as it focuses on Kamala, and Zoe is a peripheral character. In Ms. Marvel the trope of the typical white American teen girl is subverted as the narration does not focus on her story and she is portrayed as clueless at best, and maliciously passive aggressive and racist at worst.
I think you highlighted the prejudice very well. It shows the dynamic of outside cultures looking in on Muslim culture.
ReplyDeleteHi Cassidy,
ReplyDeleteThis response is strongest in its assessment of Zoe's passive aggression and your analysis that the text flips the typical narrative of the white American teenage girl by showing her as someone unaware of her own privilege and passively malicious to others. I would like it if your introduction focused specifically on this interaction as indicative of an overall message about cultural identities in the text.