Liberal Feminist Narratives in Diaspora Literature: Gender Equality and Global Literacy in Samira Ahmed’s Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

Abstract

This study examines the representation of liberal feminism in Samira Ahmed’s Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know, focusing on how the novel constructs female agency through the characters of Khayyam and Leila. Applying Wollstonecraft’s liberal feminist framework, the analysis explores how both women negotiate autonomy, education, and self-definition within patriarchal and cross-cultural contexts. Khayyam’s intellectual pursuit and self-determination represent modern liberal feminist agency, while Leila’s inner resistance and reclamation of authorship reflect subtle acts of defiance in a historical setting. Beyond depicting women’s empowerment, the novel also serves as a medium of global literacy, encouraging readers to engage critically with cultural history, gender, and representation across time and geography. However, the narrative also exposes the tensions and limitations of liberal feminist discourse, as Ahmed’s portrayal occasionally reproduces Western-centric assumptions that position Muslim women as subjects in need of liberation. Rather than diminishing its value, this ambivalence reveals the novel’s capacity to provoke critical reflection on the boundaries of feminist ideology within global literary discourse. By linking feminist analysis with the goals of SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 4 (Quality Education), this study argues that diaspora literature like Ahmed’s serves as both a tool for gender awareness and a platform for cultivating critical global literacy—empowering readers to question, reinterpret, and expand the meanings of feminism across cultural borders.