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Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing

Publication ,  Book
1990

From Publishers Weekly: 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.

Duke Scholars

Publication Date

1990

Publisher

Virago/ Indiana University Press
 

Citation

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Cooke, M., & Badran, M. (Eds.). (1990). Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. London: Virago/ Indiana University Press.
Cooke, M., and M. Badran, eds. Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. London: Virago/ Indiana University Press, 1990.
Cooke M, Badran M, editors. Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. London: Virago/ Indiana University Press; 1990.
Cooke, M., and M. Badran, editors. Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. Virago/ Indiana University Press, 1990.
Cooke M, Badran M, editors. Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. London: Virago/ Indiana University Press; 1990.

Publication Date

1990

Publisher

Virago/ Indiana University Press