Imagining Arab Womanhood

Imagining Arab Womanhood
Author: A. Jarmakani
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2008-03-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230612113

A fascinating demonstration of how U.S. representations of veils, harems, and belly dancers have operated as nostalgic and exotic symbols to help rationalize dominant U.S. narratives about power and progress.

Imagining Arab Womanhood

Imagining Arab Womanhood
Author: A. Jarmakani
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2015-10-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781349372577

A fascinating demonstration of how U.S. representations of veils, harems, and belly dancers have operated as nostalgic and exotic symbols to help rationalize dominant U.S. narratives about power and progress.

Between Banat

Between Banat
Author: Mejdulene Bernard Shomali
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2023-01-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478023902

In Between Banat Mejdulene Bernard Shomali examines homoeroticism and nonnormative sexualities between Arab women in transnational Arab literature, art, and film. Moving from The Thousand and One Nights and the Golden Era of Egyptian cinema to contemporary novels, autobiographical writing, and prints and graphic novels that imagine queer Arab futures, Shomali uses what she calls queer Arab critique to locate queer desire amid heteronormative imperatives. Showing how systems of heteropatriarchy and Arab nationalisms foreclose queer Arab women’s futures, she draws on the transliterated term “banat”—the Arabic word for girls—to refer to women, femmes, and nonbinary people who disrupt stereotypical and Orientalist representations of the “Arab woman.” By attending to Arab women’s narration of desire and identity, queer Arab critique substantiates queer Arab histories while challenging Orientalist and Arab national paradigms that erase queer subjects. In this way, Shomali frames queerness and Arabness as relational and transnational subject formations and contends that prioritizing transnational collectivity over politics of authenticity, respectability, and inclusion can help lead toward queer freedom.

Arab and Arab American Feminisms

Arab and Arab American Feminisms
Author: Rabab Abdulhadi
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2011-04-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815651236

In this collection, Arab and Arab American feminists enlist their intimate experiences to challenge simplistic and long-held assumptions about gender, sexuality, and commitments to feminism and justice-centered struggles among Arab communities. Contributors hail from multiple geographical sites, spiritualities, occupations, sexualities, class backgrounds, and generations. Poets, creative writers, artists, scholars, and activists employ a mix of genres to express feminist issues and highlight how Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives simultaneously inhabit multiple, overlapping, and intersecting spaces: within families and communities; in anticolonial and antiracist struggles; in debates over spirituality and the divine; within radical, feminist, and queer spaces; in academia and on the street; and among each other. Contributors explore themes as diverse as the intersections between gender, sexuality, Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia, and Zionism, and the restoration of Arab Jews to Arab American histories. This book asks how members of diasporic communities navigate their sense of belonging when the country in which they live wages wars in the lands of their ancestors. Arab and Arab American Feminisms opens up new possibilities for placing grounded Arab and Arab American feminist perspectives at the center of gender studies, Middle East studies, American studies, and ethnic studies.

A Woman Is No Man

A Woman Is No Man
Author: Etaf Rum
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2019-03-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062699784

A Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist for Best Fiction and Best Debut • BookBrowse's Best Book of the Year • A Marie Claire Best Women's Fiction of the Year • A Real Simple Best Book of the Year • A PopSugar Best Book of the Year • A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March • A Newsweek Best Book of the Summer • A USA Today Best Book of the Week • A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel • A Refinery 29 Best Books of the Month • A Buzzfeed News 4 Books We Couldn't Put Down Last Month • A New Arab Best Books by Arab Authors • An Electric Lit 20 Best Debuts of the First Half of 2019 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the Year “Garnering justified comparisons to Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns... Etaf Rum’s debut novel is a must-read about women mustering up the bravery to follow their inner voice.” —Refinery 29 The New York Times bestseller and Read with Jenna TODAY SHOW Book Club pick telling the story of three generations of Palestinian-American women struggling to express their individual desires within the confines of their Arab culture in the wake of shocking intimate violence in their community. "Where I come from, we’ve learned to silence ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence will save us. Where I come from, we keep these stories to ourselves. To tell them to the outside world is unheard of—dangerous, the ultimate shame.” Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband Adam, a pressure that intensifies as she begins to have children—four daughters instead of the sons Fareeda tells Isra she must bear. Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. Deya can’t help but wonder if her options would have been different had her parents survived the car crash that killed them when Deya was only eight. But her grandmother is firm on the matter: the only way to secure a worthy future for Deya is through marriage to the right man. But fate has a will of its own, and soon Deya will find herself on an unexpected path that leads her to shocking truths about her family—knowledge that will force her to question everything she thought she knew about her parents, the past, and her own future.

Islamophobia/Islamophilia

Islamophobia/Islamophilia
Author: Andrew Shryock
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2010-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253004543

"Islamophobia" is a term that has been widely applied to anti-Muslim ideas and actions, especially since 9/11. The contributors to this provocative volume explore and critique the usefulness of the concept for understanding contexts ranging from the Middle Ages to the modern day. Moving beyond familiar explanations such as good Muslim/bad Muslim stereotypes or the "clash of civilizations," they describe Islamophobia's counterpart, Islamophilia, which deploys similar oppositions in the interest of fostering public acceptance of Islam. Contributors address topics such as conflicts over Islam outside and within Muslim communities in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia; the cultural politics of literature, humor, and urban renewal; and religious conversion to Islam.

Arab, Muslim, Woman

Arab, Muslim, Woman
Author: Lindsey Moore
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2008-05-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1134138776

Given a long history of representation by others, what themes and techniques do Arab Muslim women writers, filmmakers and visual artists foreground in their presentation of postcolonial experience? Lindsey Moore’s groundbreaking book demonstrates ways in which women appropriate textual and visual modes of representation, often in cross-fertilizing ways, in challenges to Orientalist/colonialist, nationalist, Islamist, and ‘multicultural’ paradigms. She provides an accessible but theoretically-informed analysis by foregrounding tropes of vision, visibility and voice; post-nationalist melancholia and mother/daughter narratives; transformations of ‘homes and harems’; and border crossings in time, space, language, and media. In doing so, Moore moves beyond notions of speaking or looking ‘back’ to encompass a diverse feminist poetics and politics and to emphasize ethical forms of representation and reception. Aran, Muslim, Woman is distinctive in the eclectic body of work that it brings together. Discussing Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, and Tunisia, as well as postcolonial Europe, Moore argues for better integration of Arab Muslim contexts in the postcolonial canon. In a book for readers interested in women's studies, history, literature, and visual media, we encounter work by Assia Djebar, Mona Hatoum, Fatima Mernissi, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Nawal el Saadawi, Leila Sebbar, Zineb Sedira, Ahdaf Soueif, Moufida Tlatli, Fadwa Tuqan, and many other women.

Our Women on the Ground

Our Women on the Ground
Author: Zahra Hankir
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0143133411

Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it’s like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour “A stirring, provocative and well-made new anthology . . . that rewrites the hoary rules of the foreign correspondent playbook, deactivating the old clichés.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times A growing number of intrepid Arab and Middle Eastern sahafiyat—female journalists—are working tirelessly to shape nuanced narratives about their changing homelands, often risking their lives on the front lines of war. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique—as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers. In Our Women on the Ground, nineteen of these women tell us, in their own words, about what it’s like to report on conflicts that (quite literally) hit close to home. Their daring and heartfelt stories, told here for the first time, shatter stereotypes about the region’s women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood. INCLUDING ESSAYS BY: Donna Abu-Nasr, Aida Alami, Hannah Allam, Jane Arraf, Lina Attalah, Nada Bakri, Shamael Elnoor, Zaina Erhaim, Asmaa al-Ghoul, Hind Hassan, Eman Helal, Zeina Karam, Roula Khalaf, Nour Malas, Hwaida Saad, Amira Al-Sharif, Heba Shibani, Lina Sinjab, and Natacha Yazbeck

Excellent Daughters

Excellent Daughters
Author: Katherine Zoepf
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2016-01-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0698411471

For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals. Hundreds of thousands of devout girls and women are attending Qur’anic schools—and using the training to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective. And, in 2011, young women helped to lead antigovernment protests in the Arab Spring. But their voices have not been heard. Their stories have not been told. In Syria, before its civil war, she documents a complex society in the midst of soul searching about its place in the world and about the role of women. In Lebanon, she documents a country that on the surface is freer than other Arab nations but whose women must balance extreme standards of self-presentation with Islamic codes of virtue. In Abu Dhabi, Zoepf reports on a generation of Arab women who’ve found freedom in work outside the home. In Saudi Arabia she chronicles driving protests and women entering the retail industry for the first time. In the aftermath of Tahrir Square, she examines the crucial role of women in Egypt's popular uprising. Deeply informed, heartfelt, and urgent, Excellent Daughters brings us a new understanding of the changing Arab societies—from 9/11 to Tahrir Square to the rise of ISIS—and gives voice to the remarkable women at the forefront of this change.

Arab American Women

Arab American Women
Author: Michael W. Suleiman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2021-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815655134

Arab American women have played an essential role in shaping their homes, their communities, and their country for centuries. Their contributions, often marginalized academically and culturally, are receiving long- overdue attention with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Arab American women’s studies. The collected essays in this volume capture the history and significance of Arab American women, addressing issues of migration, transformation, and reformation as these women invented occupations, politics, philosophies, scholarship, literature, arts, and, ultimately, themselves. Arab American women brought culture and absorbed culture; they brought relationships and created relationships; they brought skills and talents and developed skills and talents. They resisted inequities, refused compliance, and challenged representation. They engaged in politics, civil society, the arts, education, the market, and business. And they told their own stories. These histories, these genealogies, these narrations that are so much a part of the American experiment are chronicled in this volume, providing an indispensable resource for scholars and activists.