Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women's Writing
This volume carefully assesses fixed notions of Arab womanhood by exploring the complexities of Arab women's lives as portrayed in literature. Encompassing women writers and critics from Arab, French, and English traditions, it forges a transnational Arab feminist consciousness. Brinda Mehta examines the significance of memory rituals in women's writings, such as the importance of water and purification rites in Islam and how these play out in the women's space of the hammam (Turkish bath)....
Search in google:
Explores literary visions of Arab women on the edge of gender, sexuality, nation, and religion.
Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 1Palestinian Women and the Problematics of Survival: Liana Badr's The Eye of the Mirror 28Spatial Impositions, Circularity, and Memory: Malika Mokeddem's Les hommes qui marchent and Le siecle des sauterelles 76The Politics of the Female Body: Assia Djebar's Women of Algiers in Their Apartment and Fatima Mernissi's Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood 121Creative Dissidence and Religious Contentions: The Works of Nawal El Saadawi 152Cities under Siege and the Language of Survival: Hanan Al-Shaykh's Beirut Blues and Nuha Al-Radi's Baghdad Diaries 188The Semiology of Food: Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent 228Conclusion 263Works Cited 269Index 281
