Faith and Awareness in Young Female Celebrity Life Writing: The Memoirs of Lena Dunham, Malala Yousafzai, and Katie Davis

Abstract

This project is a critical analysis of the life writing of young, contemporary women focusing on the spiritual aspect of their writing aiming to study the spiritual beliefs and purpose behind including this aspect of their life in an autobiography. of these young women through their published autobiographical works. This paper focuses on studying the autobiographies of three young, contemporary, celebrity women- Lena Dunham (Not That Kind of Girl), Malala Yousafzai (I Am Malala), and Katie Davis (Kisses from Katie). Lena Dunham is a controversial entertainer, while Malala and Katie Davis are conservative, religious women, although Malala is Muslim and Davis is Christian. Based on their writings about their life, analysis is done to compare and contrast the influences and reasons behind their beliefs, and the way they act on them, according to their memoirs. In addition, theoretical framework on autobiography and life writing is studied in order to situate the autobiographies in both history and modern critics in order to determine the intent of each writer and the purpose behind writing the memoir within their respective autobiography.