The Last Girl Analysis

If there is one thing that historians and genocide survivors have in common, it is the responsibility to accurately represent past events. For the historian, there is a wide breadth of past events that is the historian’s responsibility to accurately portray, but for the genocide survivor, there is typically only a singular historical episode worthy of accurate representation for their interests. In other words, genocide survivors must consistently relive their trauma through memory, memoirs, and other tools in an effort to combat what is the final stage of genocide, denial. This paper seeks to discuss these topics of memory, memoir, and genocide denial in an effort to elucidate the nuances that color the difficulty in achieving justice after

Nadia Murad, author of The Last Girl, is a survivor of the Yazidi Genocide orchestrated by ISIS and her memoir of the events that took place when she was held captive as a slave of ISIS works to perform two functions, to make sure this genocide is never forgotten and to work as a sort of common unifier for other Yazidi’s who went through the same traumatic experience. Nadia is essentially forced to relive the trauma in the recounting of her story which includes numerous moments where she is raped, beaten, and reduced to mere objecthood (Murad, 296). However, Nadia is aware of the difficulties of repeating her story when she writes, “My story, told honestly and matter-of-factly, is the best weapon I have against terrorism” (Murad, 306). What makes Nadia’s memoir the best weapon she has against the perpetrators of such heinous acts against her is that it works against the goal of ISIS, that of “erasing the existence of Yazidis from Iraq” (Murad, 132). If the first act towards genocide justice can be considered as identifying the perpetrators of the crime, then Nadia’s work achieves this to an unprecedented level, but Nadia does not stop there, she takes upon herself the responsibility to be amongst the forefront of Yazidis pushing to

Genocide denial can take many shapes and forms such as lessening the perception of its severity or placing causal responsibility for the genocide on its victims or survivors (Watenpaugh, 6). Regardless of what appearance the denial takes, all forms of genocide denial allude to perform the same function which is the prevention of justice and restitution for the victims of the genocide (Watenpaugh, Lecture 14). One of the clearest cases of genocide denial is the Armenian Genocide, to which the Turkish government goes to great lengths to dispute, discredit and altogether deny that the Armenian Genocide ever occurred. Noted expert on the Armenian Genocide Keith Watenpaugh states in his work “Genocide Denial Ethics”, “Denial of the genocide—and its component parts—is part of state high school curricula, figures in museum displays and at historical sites and is supported in academic venues” (Watenpaugh, 3). The systematic orchestration of the Turkish government’s efforts to silence any espousing of the notion that the Armenian Genocide took place is readily apparent in nearly all public spheres of Turkish society, from the classroom curriculum to the highest academic institutions. The vast sum of evidence points to a denial of this genocide done so to promote some form of Turkish political or social agenda and the harm done by the