“If Only I Had A Girlfriend!”: Towards A Queer Reading Of The Diary Of A Young Girl

Abstract

In the January 6, 1944 entry of The Diary of A Young Girl, Anne Frank confesses her queer desire. This thesis will explore why this confession has received so little attention from scholars, despite its potential to undermine prevailing interpretations of Anne’s identity and experience within the Annex. Looking to Miranda Fricker’s 2007 text, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, this thesis will examine how and why Anne’s queer confession has been ignored, and how the subdual of Anne’s queer testimony has contributed to her status as an iconic Holocaust victim. Because the construction of Anne as an iconic victim denies her personal identity and sexual agency, my thesis—by providing a queer reading of The Diary—aims to undermine this construction at its foundations. By recovering Anne’s queer desire, my project will recontextualize Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl within the emergent field of Queer Holocaust Studies.