Arab women's lives retold : exploring identity through writing / edited by Nawar Al-Hassan Golley ; with a foreword by Miriam Cooke.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Golley, Nawar Al-Hassan, 1961-

Series:

Gender, culture, and politics in the Middle East

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Arab countries--Biography.

Women.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Autobiography.

Feminists--Arab countries--Biography.

Feminists.

Arab countries.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xxxvi, 271 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Examining late twentieth-century autobiographical writing by Arab women novelists, poets, and artists, this essay collection explores the ways in which Arab women have portrayed and created their identities within differing social environments. The collection goes well beyond dismantling standard notions of Arab female subservience, exploring the many ways Arab women writers have learned to speak to each other, to their readers, and to the world at large. Drawing from a rich body of literature, the essays attest to the surprisingly lively and committed roles Arab women play in varied geographic regions, at home and abroad. These recent writings assess how the interplay between individual, private, ethnic identity and the collective, public, global world of politics has impacted Arab women's rights.

Contents:

Introduction: Contemporary Arab Women's Autobiographical Writings / Nawar Al-Hassan Golley xxv

Artistic Works Discussed xxxv

Part 1 Autobiographical Writings and Cultural Hybridity

1 Passage Through the Harem: Historicizing a Western Obsession in Leila Ahmed's A Border Passage: From Cairo to America-a Woman's Journey / Bernadette Andrea 3

2 Dismembering the Gaze: Speleology and Vivisection in Assia Djebar's L'amour, la fantasia / Karina Eileraas 16

3 Yasmina, an Autodiegetic Character: Herstory and History / Benaouda Lebdai 35

Part 2 Autobiographical Writings and Transnationalism

4 Poetic Geographies: Interracial Insurgency in Arab American Autobiographical Spaces / Keith Feldman 51

5 Postnational Ethics, Postcolonial Politics: Raimonda Tawil's: My Home, My Prison / Jamil Khader 71

6 A Muslim Woman Writes Back: Leila Abouzeid's: Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Woman / Pauline Homsi Vinson 90

Part 3 Autobiographical Writings and Communal Identity

7 Voices Across the Frontier: Fatima Mernissi's: Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood / Filiz Turhan-Swenson 111

8 To Undo What the North Has Done: Fragments of a Nation and Arab Collectivism in the Fiction of Ahdaf Soueif / Mrinalini Chakravorty 129

9 Weaving Poetic Autobiographies: Individual and Communal Identities in the Poetry of Mohja Kahf and Suheir Hammad / Carol Fadda-Conrey 155

Part 4 The Personal and the Political in Autobiographical Writings

10 Arab Women Write the Trauma of Imprisonment and Exile / Daphne M. Grace 181

11 A Journey of Belonging: A Global(ized) Self Finds Peace / Nawar Al-Hassan Golley, Ahmad Al-Issa 201

12 Art, Autobiography and the Maternal Abject / Mireille Astore 222.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-257) and index.

ISBN:

9780815631224

0815631227

9780815631477

0815631472

OCLC:

140102844