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In Does My Head Look Big in This? Randa Abdul-Fattah explores the world of young people and to where their mentality turns. Of the many ideas handled in the novel, my paper underlines the attitude of young adult female Muslim minority towards the recurring \"otherizing\" images associating Muslims with terrorism: the West sees that Muslim men impose and exercise their patriarchal authority over subordinated passive Muslim women. Hijab epitomizes Eastern backwardness, oppression, otherness, and national insecurity. The novelist resents this defective Orientalist eye reawakened following 9/11 events and other terrorist activities. Through her characters, she makes an opposing statement. This paper tackles the issue of the \"other\" from a pure social perspective. It questions these Western views that otherize the Orient and its women. Also, it brings to light how \"otherizing\" may be inflicted, as well, upon \"white young women\" when they break the norms of the \"exclusively\" Western civilized way of life. The paper aims at conveying a real-life picture of a new-generation of solid young women ready to bear the burden of change. They seek to shape a third Western-Eastern history replacing the oppositional binary West vs. East. Applying the analytic method, four girls in their teens are spotlighted as typifying how women confront challenges and do strive against any suppression of their personalities. Supported with critical approaches of a number of theorists, post-colonial and current, the paper has shown how the racial superiority is undermined and the Western ideology is refuted and proved futile. It also has indicated that Eastern women enthusiastically re-conceptualize the \"other\".

The aim of this paper is to examine features of adolescent discourse in Abdel-Fattah's novel Does My Head Look Big in This? and investigate the ways in which such features contribute to the construction of the identity of the protagonist Amal. The study adopts a social constructionist view of discourse (De Fina, 2006) and is informed by the theory of indexicality (Silverstein, 2003; and Eckert, 2008). As the novel is narrated from the first person point of view, both the narrative in the novel as well as the verbal interaction between the protagonist and other characters in the novel are sites where Amal constructs her identity. Findings suggest that interactional behavior such as exchange of insults are opportunities where she constructs an identity of a powerful individual who is able to challenge racism, on the one hand, and as one who is the victim of media stereotyping and prejudice on the other. The stances Amal adopts towards her uncle, and her friend's mother construct her as an insider to the Australian community, with a deeper understanding of Australian norms than the two adults, and also as a Muslim who is knowledgeable about her faith, rather than one who simply follows cultural convention. Furthermore, references to semiotic resources in the narrative contribute to the construction of Amal's identity as a young Muslim, but also as an Australian adolescent.