Examining late twentieth-century autobiographical writing by Arab women novelists, poets, and artists, this anthology explores the ways in which Arab women have portrayed and created their identities within differing social environments. Even as the collection dismantles standard notions of Arab female subservience, the works presented here go well beyond the confines of those traditional boundaries. The book explores the many routes Arab women writers have taken to speak to each other, to their readers, and to the world at large. Drawing from a rich body of literature, the essays collectively 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.
Arab Women’s Lives Retold
Exploring Identity through Writing
Edited by
Nawar Al-Hassan Golley
With a foreword byMiriam Cooke
308 pp.
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774161384
For sale only in the Middle East
19.99
Related products
Alif 36
Friendship: Representations and Cultural Variations
Edited by Ferial GhazoulFriendship, though esteemed, has not been central in critical studies. It has been overshadowed by other bonding relationships. However, it figures as a privileged theme in classical, medieval, renaissance, and modern philosophy. More recently, sociological, anthropological, and psychological studies have explored the varied dimensions of friendship. Different cultures view friendship in various perspectives that intersect, contrast, and echo each other. In Middle Eastern, East Asian, European, and American thought, philosophers, jurists, and creative writers have explored the idea of friendship and their input is analyzed in this issue. Alif 36 foregrounds different ways of presenting friendship in diverse cultures and historical periods.
...read more
8 December 2016
Paperback
500 pp.16.5X24cm
75
Alif 37
Literature and Journalism
Edited byHala HalimThe articles in Alif 37 address the intersection of literature and journalism, in a wide variety of Arabophone, Francophone, Anglophone, and Latin American contexts, analyzing the literary in relation to an array of journalistic genres and forums, including the interview, investigative journalism, the questionnaire, the blogosphere, creative non-fiction and reportage, literary websites, cultural periodicals, the autobiographical essay, and writers’ opinion articles. Complemented by the testimonies of two journalist–littérateurs and an interview with an artist–poet–art critic, the studies present fresh aspects of Arab literary modernity, littérature engagée, the politics of reception and translation in cultural journalism, canon-formation in relation to journalism, the journalistic delineation of a literary generation’s profile, gender and censorship of creative writers, and revolution and civil strife.
...read more
15 November 2017
Paperback
500 pp.16.5X24cm
75
The Literary Life of Cairo
One Hundred Years in the Heart of the City
Edited and with an introduction Samia MehrezUnlike The Literary Atlas of Cairo, which focuses on the literary geopolitics of the cityscape, this companion volume immerses the reader in the complex network of socioeconomic and cultural lives in the city. The seven chapters first introduce the reader to representations of some of Cairo’s prominent profiles, both political and cultural, and their impact on the city’s literary geography, before presenting a spectrum of readings of the city by its multiethnic, multinational, and multilingual writers across class, gender, and generation. Daunting images of colonial school experiences and startling contrasts of postcolonial educational realities are revealed, while Cairo’s moments of political participation and oppression are illustrated, as well as the space accorded to women within the city across history and class. Together, The Literary Atlas of Cairo and The Literary Life of Cairo produce a literary geography of Cairo that goes beyond the representation of space in literature to reconstruct the complex network of human relationships in that space.
...read more
22 July 2016
Paperback
400 pp.15X23cm
24.95
Alif 31
The Other Americas
Edited by Ira DworkinThis issue of Alif focuses on critical understandings of America beyond its frequent equation with the physical borders of the United States of America and the ideological jurisdiction of its official state. Critically exploring issues of transnationalism, globalization, ethnic pluralism, and cultural cross-fertilization, The Other Americas disavows narrow traditions of American exceptionalism and develops a conversation about the less visible “Americas” in the domestic and global senses, considering less wellknown—but no less central—cultural productions within the borders of the United States and beyond them. In addition to acknowledging the social, political, artistic, and literary vitality of the entire American hemisphere, the issue suggests an even more inclusive idea of the United States by highlighting oppositional cultural practices in the fields of literature, film, and performance. The issue presents versions and visions and variations of America that seek to interrogate national identity and broaden established definitions while suggesting new modes of inquiry into the U.S. as a place in conversation with others in the world. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 31.
...read more
Paperback
536 pp.17X24cm
75