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Digital Testimony and Vulnerability in Reinhard Kleist's “An Olympic Dream”: Restorying Samia's Journey Through Facebook Posts

Digital Testimony and Vulnerability in Reinhard Kleist's “An Olympic Dream”: Restorying Samia's Journey Through Facebook Posts
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Author(s): Elizabeth Varkey (Christ University, India)and Charusheela Patil (JSPM University, India)
Copyright: 2026
Pages: 38
Source title: Digital Narratives of Trauma Among Immigrant and Refugee Women
Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Andrea Scapolo (Kennesaw State University, USA), Arturo Matute Castro (Kennesaw State University, USA), Sha Huang (Kennesaw State University, USA)and Anisah Bagasra (Kennesaw State University, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/979-8-3693-9979-8.ch007

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Abstract

An Olympic Dream pieces together the story of the young female Somali athlete, Samia Yusuf Omar. In the absence of adequate information for her story coupled with Samia's attempts to hide her identity, the digital traces left behind by the athlete serve as invaluable sources for the author. Weaving together Samia's Facebook posts, text conversations, and information sourced from journalists, Reinhard Kleist recreates the lost story of an Olympian. This chapter aims to study the role of Facebook posts in disseminating Samia's story to readers and creating a narrative arc for her Olympic journey. Employing the theoretical lens of Vulnerability Studies along with Digital Postcolonialism it attempts to unpack the athlete's story. Through an in-depth study of the graphic novel characterized by its tenuous use of social media posts, this chapter examines how social discrimination, surveillance and marginalization render a refugee woman athlete from the Global South highly vulnerable.

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