Hollow Fires

In 2017, Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to President Donald Trump, denied allegations that press secretary Sean Spicer misrepresented the number of inauguration attendees, instead rebranding his lie as an “alternative fact.” Immediately, #AlternativeFact became a meme to describe a delusional spin on reality, i.e., a lie. Samira Ahmed uses “truth, facts, alternative facts, and lies” as a motif to highlight the tendency of news and online media to portray events through a biased—often overtly false—lens in order to influence public opinion and create a specific outcome. 

Each of Safiya’s chapters begins with one or more truths, facts, alternative facts, or lies related to the plot, character, and thematic development of the chapter. For example, in the chapter where Safiya responds to allegations that Jawad’s parents staged his kidnapping, she begins with a fact and a truth: “Fact: In the United States, citizens are promised equal protection under the law / Truth: Some Americans are more equal than others” (199). The fact is an objective reality, but the truth is a “quality of state in accordance with reality” (“Glossary of Intangible Things”). In juxtaposing these two sentences, the author highlights the idea that even though the constitution affords citizens equal protection, a person’s race and wealth often make it more or less likely that they’ll be treated equally. In this case, Jawad’s parents are lower-class Americans of Iraqi descent who are misrepresented by the media because of implicit bias, racism, and Islamophobia.