ABSTRACT
Pakistani women who publish accounts of their personal experiences of violence, especially the ones written in collaboration with Western journalists, face major obstacles in translating their stories into a positive social movement for change. This chapter traces the local reception of Mukhtaran Mai’s memoir In the Name of Honour (2006) as a product of media sensationalism, follows the questions raised about journalistic ethics in the initial reporting of this story and examines whether its subsequent publication as a memoir is a human rights violation, in equal measure. The premise of this argument is that there are two counts of violence against Mai: firstly, a crime against her body, and secondly, the subsequent commodification of her ordeal.
