Global Voices, Local Roots: Cultural Hybridity and Gendered Identity in Manal al-Sharif’s Daring to Drive and Daisy Khan’s Born with Wings

Abstract

This paper attempt to examine cultural hybridity and gendered identity in two contemporary autobiographical writing : Manal al-Sharif’s Daring to Drive and Daisy Khan’s Born with Wings. Applying a cultural-studies through theories of identity formation, diaspora, and hybridity-specifically, Stuart Hall’s idea of cultural identity as “a matter of becoming as well as being” (Hall 225) and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of the “third space” (Bhabha 56)-the study explores both writers journey in transnational contexts conflicting cultural expectations, religious belonging, and feminist agency. Although the two texts come from different political and sociocultural contexts-the diasporic Muslim-American and Saudi Arabia’s public activism and east to west -they both create hybridized self-representations that explain the simplistic classifications of “tradition” and “modern”. This study explores new kinds of cultural belonging that are both local and global by tracing storytelling strategies, gendered rhetorical tactics, and the interaction of memory and public action.