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y separately published work icon Ten Things I Hate about Me single work   novel   young adult  
Issue Details: First known date: 2006... 2006 Ten Things I Hate about Me
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

There are a lot of things Jamie hates about her life: her dark hair, her dad's Stone Age Charter of Curfew Rights, her real name - Jamilah Towfeek. For the past three years Jamie has hidden her Lebanese background from everyone at school. It's only with her email friend John that she can really be herself. But now things are getting complicated: the most popular boy in school is interested in her, but there's no way he would be if he knew the truth. Then there's Timothy, the school loner, who for some reason Jamie just can't stop thinking about. As for John, he seems to have a pretty big secret of his own. (Source: Trove)

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Affiliation Notes

  • This work is affiliated with the AustLit subset Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing because it has Lebanese characters, and references to Muslim culture.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: Ti ting jeg hader ved mig selv
Language: Danish
    • c
      Denmark,
      c
      Scandinavia, Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Sesam ,
      2007 .
      image of person or book cover 4468834625636736067.jpg
      This image has been sourced from online.
      Extent: 280p.
      ISBN: 9788711314791

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  • Also sound recording.

Works about this Work

The Performative Diasporic Subjectivity in Randa Abdel-Fattah's Ten Things I Hate about Me Ensiyeh Darzinejad , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Critical Literary Studies , vol. 2 no. 2 2020; (p. 179-195)

'The present paper is an attempt to study Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel, Ten Things I Hate about Me (2006) from Judith Butler's performative perspective. The main question of the research is whether the diasporic subjectivity of the Muslim protagonist of the novel is innate, static, and finalized or rather performatively constructed. It is argued that Jamilah, as a diasporic Muslim woman, is not a being with an essentialized identity; rather she is a becoming whose identity is constructed in diaspora. It is contended that Jamilah is a discursive subject, hailed by the dominant Lebanese, Australian, and Islamic discourses. Butler's attestation of the infelicity of some performances leaves space for the resignification and reappropriation of the discourses, which attempt to interpellate the subject. The study seeks to demonstrate that Jamilah as the diasporic doer, who is constituted as a result of the performative linguistic, corporal, culinary, and artistic deeds, is not determined by any of the discourses she is immersed in, and thus becomes a hybridized liminal subject who negotiates the discourses of home and host cultures through evading the dualistic logic.'

Source: Abstract.

Grafting Eco-disaporic Identity in Randa Abdel-Fattah's Selected Novels Areej Saad Almutairi , Ruzy Suliza Hashim , M. M. Raihanah , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: GEMA Online , vol. 17 no. 4 2017; (p. 179-190)

'This paper is based on three selected novels entitled Does My Head Look Big In This? (2005), Ten Things I Hate About Me (2006), and Where The Streets Had A Name (2008) written by Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979), a Palestinian-Egyptian Australian Muslim diasporic writer. In this article, we examine the manifestations of grafting eco-diasporic identity by Abdel-Fattah in order to address how identity graft is operated by interacting with ideology, culture and nature in the contexts of the host land and the homeland as represented in the three selected novels. Using Colin Richards’ theory of graft as a framework, we explore identity contestations of Muslim young adults in the novels from an ecocritical and diasporic perspectives. In the novel Does My Head Look Big In This?, the images of Amal’s sense of being marginalised in the semiosphere of the host land and the sense of self-respect of her Muslim rootedness and heritage of the homeland semiosphere frame the fractured graft of identity. The character of Jamilah, in Ten Things I Hate About Me displays genuine manifestations of the collective emblem of the grafted identity. Finally, the symbol of the iconic jar of the homeland soil and its potentiality of regenerating Hayaat’s identity in Where the Streets Had A Name exhibits the ecological semiosphere in which the grafted identity is shaped. The current discussion, therefore, offers fresh insights into allowing a new horizon for identity grafting in Abdel-Fattah’s works as well as other writers within the tradition of Muslim Diasporic Literature.'

Source: Abstract.

Minority Within : 2nd Generation Young Adult Muslim Australian in Ten Things I Hate about Me Raihanah Mohd Mydin , Norzalimah Mohd , Ruzy Suliza Hashim , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: 3L : Language, Linguistics, Literature , vol. 19 no. 3 2013; (p. 61-70)

'It is undeniable that in the era of globalisation, the young adults’ world is becoming ever fluid and expandable. For the young adult of minority descent, the challenges are made more complex given the contestation with the majority culture of the land. This paper investigates the contestation of marginalization by a Muslim young adult in multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Australia as portrayed in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s second novel entitled Ten Things I Hate About Me. The paper discusses two fundamental identity spaces within the discourse of multiculturalism – private and public, and examines how the social, cultural and religious spaces inhabited by the young adult minority protagonist influence her in the formation of her identity as a member of a minority community in a predominantly white majority society. Pitted as the ‘minority within’ for the marginalization that the protagonist feels within her immediate family circle, the experience of the young adult minority, as this paper suggests, is ever complex and uncertain.' (Publication abstract)

Hyphenated Girls : Australian-Muslim Identity in the Novels of Randa Abdel-Fattah Alice Nuttall , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: IBBYLink , Autumn 2010; (p. 12-14)
Muslim Teen Heroines in Randa Absel-Fattah's Young Adult Novels Does My Head Look Big in This? and Ten Things I Hate about Me Amy Cummins , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Literature and Belief , vol. 30 no. 2 2010; (p. 63-79)
Kids' Lit Jodie Minus , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 30 September - 1 October 2006; (p. 14)

— Review of The Arrival Shaun Tan , 2006 single work graphic novel ; Ten Things I Hate about Me Randa Abdel-Fattah , 2006 single work novel
Under Age Frances Atkinson , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Sunday Age , 1 October 2006; (p. 47)

— Review of Mokie and Bik Wendy Orr , 2006 single work children's fiction ; The Thirsty Flowers Tony Wilson , 2006 single work picture book ; Ten Things I Hate about Me Randa Abdel-Fattah , 2006 single work novel
Passionate Worlds Kathy Kozlowski , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 285 2006; (p. 58-60)

— Review of Monica Bloom Nick Earls , 2006 single work novel ; Ten Things I Hate about Me Randa Abdel-Fattah , 2006 single work novel ; The Birthmark Beth Montgomery , 2006 single work novel ; Will Maria Boyd , 2006 single work novel ; The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong Kirsty Murray , 2006 single work children's fiction ; The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie Jaclyn Moriarty , 2006 single work novel ; On the Jellicoe Road Melina Marchetta , 2006 single work novel ; Red Spikes Margo Lanagan , 2006 selected work short story ; One Whole and Perfect Day Judith Clarke , 2006 single work novel ; Notes from the Teenage Underground Simmone Howell , 2006 single work novel
[Review] Ten Things I Hate about Me Mike Shuttleworth , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Newsletter of the Australian Centre for Youth Literature , October no. 2 2006; (p. 16)

— Review of Ten Things I Hate about Me Randa Abdel-Fattah , 2006 single work novel
Books Kids Emma Rodgers , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 28 - 29 October 2006; (p. 34)

— Review of Ten Things I Hate about Me Randa Abdel-Fattah , 2006 single work novel
Middle Eastern Appearance Rosemary Neill , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 23-24 September 2006; (p. 4-6)
Multicultural Stepping Stones Jodie Minus , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Australian Literary Review , October vol. 1 no. 2 2006; (p. 10)
Jodie Minus looks at the trajectory of Melina Marchetta's career from 'multicultural' to mainstream writer. Minus expresses the hope that Randa Abdel-Fattah will travel a similar path. 'We should look forward to the day', says Minus, 'when Abdel-Fattah no longer writes only about the problems facing Muslims, but about issues faced by all sorts of Australians'.
Lifting the Veil on the Islam Experience Taghred Chandab , 2006 single work column
— Appears in: The Sun-Herald , 5 November 2006; (p. 83)
Abdel-Fattah Wins Kathleen Mitchell Award 2008 single work column
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , July vol. 88 no. 1 2008; (p. 6)
Embodying a Racialised Multiculturalism : Strategic Essentialism and Lived Hybridities in Hoa Pham's No One Like Me Debra Dudek , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers : Explorations into Children's Literature , December vol. 17 no. 2 2007; (p. 43-49)
Debra Dudek is interested in the intersection of multiculturalism, cultural citizenship and children's literature and in this article looks at the 'tension between representing an acceptance of cultural difference...and representing all people within one culture as the same' (43). She locates her analysis within the field of Asian-Australian studies through a discussion of Hoa Pham's No One Like Me (1998), the story of a young Vietnamese girl who lives in Australia with her family, arguing that the text 'simultaneously highlights and deconstructs gender and the Asian family as homogenous categories' (43). Framing the analysis with a discussion of the Howard Government's approach to cultural diversity and its viewpoint that 'immigrants from Asia threaten the notion of a unified Australia', Dudek draws attention to the 'turbulent past and uncertain future' of multiculturalism which, she argues, relies on 'concepts of sameness and difference' that fundamentally support and maintain policies of assimilation (43-44). Dudek posits that No One Like Me negotiates the question of 'how to recognize and accept race and gender strategically as essential categories of difference without homogenising them' (45) in a way which destabilizes 'neat and static categories of otherness' and 'opens up the possibility of multiple subject positions [and] complex lived hybridities' (48).
Last amended 19 Apr 2018 12:01:46
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