Arab Women Writers is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the role and place of women in Arabic Literature from the last two decades of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. This comprehensive work offers a sampling of a rich body of literature which predates Islam. The first section consists of nine essays embracing the literature of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Arab North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf and Yemen.
In the second part, this unique study contains a complete bibliography for over 1,200 Arab women writers. Each entry consists of a concise biography and a list of the authors’ published works in French and English including those translated into English.
The overview of creative writing in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf is particularly interesting thanks to its author Dr. Suad Al-Mana, the first Saudi woman to become full time professor of classical Arabic literature at King Saud University. Her research and published articles include women’s writings in Saudi Arabia and in fact a number of Saudi women writers were her students.
Although women’s creative writing appeared in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf with the rise of girls’ education, Al-Mana rightly points out that “ the absence of women’s writing prior to this does not mean that women in the Arabian Peninsula created no literature, for women played a role in oral composition, particularly colloquial poetry”.
Sultana Al-Sudairi was the first woman to have a work published in Saudi Arabia and even the Gulf. She published a collection of poems in 1956 under the pen name “Nida”. At that time, it was not considered proper for a woman, especially in the Najd to publicly express her feelings about love although women poets especially Bedouin women have, since ancient times, spoken about love in their oral poetry known as Nabati.
Although the publication of Al-Sudairi’s poetry was unprecedented, it was undoubtedly Fawziya Abu Khaled who was instrumental in bringing about a revitalizing change. She was the first woman poet in Saudi Arabia to compose prose poetry. Her first poetry book “Until When Will They Kidnap you on the Wedding Night” was published in 1975, in Lebanon, while she was studying at the American University of Beirut. Moreover, in a long poem, Abu Khaled expresses her feelings about aging, a theme which until then had been tackled by men. The poem describes a woman’s feelings when she suddenly becomes aware of old age.
Pioneering Arab women writers appeared in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria and at the beginning of the twentieth century in Iraq and Palestine. Arab women’s writings for the last hundred and twenty years, have dealt mostly with historical concerns and an awareness of a double burden. Radwa Ashour, Mohammed Berrada, Ferial J. Ghazoul, and Amina Rachid, the authors of the introduction remark that “there is an increasing contradiction between appearance and truth, word and deed, hope and illusion. This confused, often chaotic social reality is reflected in both men and women and their relationships with the self, others, and the surrounding environment. Since the 1970s, Arabic literature has entered the age of doubt, and the question mark has replaced certainty. Arab women have written about war, frustrations, the erosion of all preconceptions, and a reality even stranger than fiction. More and more women writers have turned to the literature of exile and marginalization “.
Despite their different nationalities Arab women writers have always searched for their own selves in order to understand their place within society and to give a new meaning to their lives. During the past decades historical differences between Arab countries did show up in women’s writings but the authors agree that the contemporary Arab literary scene “ is giving us mature, distinguished literature, both from pioneering countries and from those that followed later; there is no difference between the center and the margins.”
