A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star
Sanam Maher$23.79
$27.99
"An exemplary work of investigative journalism." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times The murder of a Pakistani social media star exposes a culture divided between accelerating modernity and imposed traditional values--and the tragedy of those caught in the middle.
In 2016, Pakistan's first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered in a suspected honor killing. Her death quickly became a media sensation. It was both devastatingly routine and breathtakingly brutal, and in a new media landscape, it couldn't be ignored. Qandeel had courted attention and outrage with a talent for self-promotion that earned her comparisons to Kim Kardashian--and made her the constant victim of harassment and death threats. Social media and reality television exist uneasily alongside honor killings and forced marriages in a rapidly, if unevenly, modernizing Pakistan, and Qandeel Baloch's story became emblematic of the cultural divide. In this definitive and up-to-date account, Sanam Maher reconstructs the story of Qandeel's life and explores the depth and range of her legacy from her impoverished hometown rankled by her infamy, to the aspiring fashion models who follow her footsteps, to the Internet activists resisting the same vicious online misogyny she faced. Maher depicts a society at a crossroads, where women serve as an easy scapegoat for its anxieties and dislocations, and teases apart the intrigue and myth-making of the Qandeel Baloch story to restore the humanity of the woman at its center.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Published: 01/28/2020
ISBN: 9781612198408
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.10d
Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2019
Publishers Weekly 12/02/2019
Booklist 01/01/2020 pg. 28
Shelf Awareness 02/21/2020
In 2016, Pakistan's first social media celebrity, Qandeel Baloch, was murdered in a suspected honor killing. Her death quickly became a media sensation. It was both devastatingly routine and breathtakingly brutal, and in a new media landscape, it couldn't be ignored. Qandeel had courted attention and outrage with a talent for self-promotion that earned her comparisons to Kim Kardashian--and made her the constant victim of harassment and death threats. Social media and reality television exist uneasily alongside honor killings and forced marriages in a rapidly, if unevenly, modernizing Pakistan, and Qandeel Baloch's story became emblematic of the cultural divide. In this definitive and up-to-date account, Sanam Maher reconstructs the story of Qandeel's life and explores the depth and range of her legacy from her impoverished hometown rankled by her infamy, to the aspiring fashion models who follow her footsteps, to the Internet activists resisting the same vicious online misogyny she faced. Maher depicts a society at a crossroads, where women serve as an easy scapegoat for its anxieties and dislocations, and teases apart the intrigue and myth-making of the Qandeel Baloch story to restore the humanity of the woman at its center.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Melville House Publishing
Published: 01/28/2020
ISBN: 9781612198408
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.10d
Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2019
Publishers Weekly 12/02/2019
Booklist 01/01/2020 pg. 28
Shelf Awareness 02/21/2020