Does My Head Look Big In This Essay

Amal Mohammed Nasrullah Abdel-Hakim is a sixteen year old, Australian-Palestinian girl living in a suburb of Melbourne who makes the biggest decision of her life as a adolescent and respect to her religion, which was to wear the hijab (Muslim headscarf) full time. In the book, “Does My Head Look Big In This?’, Randa Abdel-Fattah highlights the conflicts of Amal and explores the connection among identity, views and journey in the theme of how individuals should not be judged by their appearances ,traditional culture,gender roles and stereotype and how it cannot restrict the individuals who they truly are. In the beginning of the novel, the author introduces a internal conflict experienced by Amal. Amal introduces her schools that she has attended but at the same time,gives the

Amal knew and even her own parents that wearing the hijab to her school will have consequences especially from her peers and school administrators. So, on a Monday morning, after class, her classmates decide to confront her about her headscarf or her “new look” in other words. As people gathered around her, one of her classmates questioned “ Did your parents force you?” Kristy asks”and to that Amal replied “My dad told me if I don’t wear it he’ll marry me off to a sixty-five-year-old camel owner in Egypt” (Abdel-Fattah 70-71). A central racial expectation that is occured in the novel is how women/ females belonging to a muslim race are often oppressed. In Amal’s life, this demonstrates the judgement of the school administrators and her peers who just assume that Amal was forced to wear it by her parents. Instead of going against or defending herself against Krista’s assumption about her parents forcing her to wear it, Amal repeats the assumption, exaggerating it to the extent that introduces another anti-muslim stereotype herself which was arranged and forced marriage of