Blog post #6 responding to Mazigh's "Hope and Despair"
Using an autobiographical narrative to unfold the story of her husband's imprisonment and subsequent torture in Syria, Monia Mazigh's choice to write in first person creates an unavoidably intimate sense of empathy with her audience. In choosing this immensely personal perspective, Mazigh thus invites her reader into the narrative early in her memoir, which not only builds a sense of trust with her audience but also places the reader in a position in which they are experiencing the events blindly alongside of Mazigh. Of course, this is not to say that Mazigh is naive, on the contrary, she becomes a shrewd diplomat due to her circumstances; nonetheless, her situation causes her to exercise
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[T]his was my introduction to diplomacy. . . [i]ndifference and bureaucracy seemed to be the new rule[;] in order to survive and overcome the problems I faced, I would have to learn a new language" (31). Like Mazigh, her audience also learns "a new language" along with her, which also allows her reader to assume a role in the fight alongside her, together in a battle to save her husband. What is more, Mazigh's story is a love story. However, it is a deconstructed love story, one in which the hero is a woman and she is saving a man: her husband. Mazigh's departure from a traditional romance story laces a feminist undertone throughout her narrative, especially when she ultimately leans on logic in both her campaign to save her husband and in her recount (memoir) of her experiences. Mazigh subtly dismantles repressive stereotyping associated with women in the Muslim faith by showing herself not as just a mother of two children and a wife, but furthermore, as a poised and powerful woman engaged in battle. Mazigh uses evidence such as newspaper clippings, journal entries, letters, emails, and telephone conversations to express the work she did to find her husband; her efforts are methodical and rational. As a reader, at times it seems unfathomable, considering her