Arab Women's Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing (Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East)

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.

<b>Nawar Al-Hassan Golley</b> is associate professor of literary and critical theory and women’s studies in the Department of English at the American University of Sharjah. She is the author of the pioneering book <i>Reading Arab Women’s Autobiographies: Shahrazad Tells Her Story.</i>