co-author: Margot Badran
This collection of stories, speeches, essays, poems and memoirs bears fierce testimony to a tradition of brave Arab feminist writing in the face of subjugation by a Muslim patriarchy. Palestinian Fadwa Tuqan’s father demanded that she compose political poetry yet kept her secluded from the outside world. Zainaba (last name omitted), a nurse from Mauritania, West Africa, who herself underwent female circumcision, or clitoridectomy, says, “It is not a sin if it is not done, but it is better if it is,” and exhorts a group of midwives to modify the disfigurement (“A woman with no clitoris is like a mud wall, a piece of cardboard, without spark, without goals, without desire. . . . It must not be all cut off!”) and to use antiseptics. And Egyptian Alifa Rifaat, who wrote in the secrecy of her bathroom until her husband’s death, offers stories about a girl undergoing a clitoridectomy and about a bride who fears her husband will discover she isn’t a virgin so she inserts powdered glass inside herself to draw blood on her wedding night. Egyptians Ihsan Assal’s and Andree Chedid’s fiction depicts, respectively, a husband who incarcerates his “recalcitrant” young wife with the permission of the courts and a 60-year-old woman who plots the murder of her husband. An editorial by Egyptian Amina Said laments the return of the veil. Badran translated and edited Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, 1879-1924 ; Cooke is the author of War’s Other Voices: Women Writers in the Lebanese Civil War.
Published Reviews:
- Domes, Summer 1999
- Journal of Modern Literature, 18/2, 1993
- Digest of Middle East Studies, Summer 1993
- Al-Karmil 43, 1992
- Al-Raida, Spring 1992
- Arabiyya, Volume 25, 1991
- Feminist Bookstore News, January-February 1991
- Dagens Nyheter, 14 January 1991
- Critical Inquiry, 17/2, Winter 1991
- The Antioch Record, March 15, 1991
- Journal of Women’s History, March 1991
- Academic Library Book Reviews, April 1991
- New Directions for Women, Volume 20, May 1991
- Belles Lettres, Volume 6/4, 1991
- MESA Bulletin, 1991 (25)
- The Women’s Review of Books, 8/9, June 1991
- University Press Book News, Volume 3, June 1991
- Third World Review, Volume 7, July 1991
- Translation Review, July 1991
- On the Issues, Summer, 1991
- Studies on Women’s Abstracts, 9/1, 1991
- MERIP, September – October 1991
- World Literature Today Autumn 1991
- G’shaim, Fall, 1991
- Bridges, 2/2, Fall, 1991
- Derde Wereld, Volume 10/3, December 1991
- Internationell, 1991
- Multicultural Education Abstracts, 10/2, 1991
- Al-Sharq al-Awsat, March 8, 1990
- Preview, 1/10, May 1990
- Publisher’s Weekly, May 18, 1990
- Booklist, June 1, 1990
- Black Arts, Issue 124, June 1-30, 1990
- The Independent, July 7, 1990
- Durrant’s, August 11, 1990
- New Statesman and Society, Volume 3, August 1990
- Arab Bookworld, October 1990
- Voice Literary Supplement, November 1990
- The Paper, December 6, 1990
- Sparerib, 1990
2nd Edition
- Arab Studies Journal Fall 2005
- Al-Ahram Weekly Supplement, December 31, 2005 (republished by
- Arabworldbooks.com)
- Arab News April 27, 2006
