Shahrazad and the Oppressed Femininity

Shahrazad and the Oppressed Femininity
Author: Yusuf Qatami
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-10-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1665571853

A glance at “Shahrazad and the Oppressed Femininity” In this book, the author addressed specific details that other novels did not address before. It talks about recurring events faced by Arab middle eastern women which in turn had a significant impact on changing their course of life. Shahrazad’s novel is the best companion in which the image of the Arab woman and her life struggles are shown in the form of a collection of stories treated by the protagonist “Shahrazad” from her feminine point of view with the consultations of the antagonist, her husband. Who in turn gives his opinion from a purely misogynistic point of view. In this psychological novel, Shahrazad tells her repressive husband true stories about several women she met by chance. Her pure feminine nature aroused her curiosity to learn about the hidden secrets behind the calm faces of these characters, where she finds hearts loaded with pain and suffering. Thus, Shahrazad took the initiative to help them, curing their wounds and ensuring a better life for them. Although she was unable to help herself and remained a victim of her tyrannical husband, Shahrazad couldn’t break her chains and remained trapped in the “great palace”, her eternal prison. She devoted herself by sacrificing and accepting to be the scented candle that burns for the happiness of others. Shahrazad and the Oppressed Femininity is a must-read book full of diverse and unique experiences.

I Killed Scheherazade

I Killed Scheherazade
Author: Jumānah Sallūm Ḥaddād
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1569768404

Fiery and candid; a provocative and courageous exploration of what it means to be an Arab woman today.

Reading Arab Women's Autobiographies

Reading Arab Women's Autobiographies
Author: Nawar Al-Hassan Golley
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2003-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780292705456

The author applies a number of Western critical theories to Arab women's autobiographical works, including Marxism, feminism, colonial discourse & narrative theory, & at the same time interrogates these theories against chosen texts to test their adequacy for analysis of writings from other cultures.

Anxiety of Erasure

Anxiety of Erasure
Author: Hanadi Al-Samman
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2015-12-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815653298

Far from offering another study that bemoans Arab women’s repression and veiling, Anxiety of Erasure looks at Arab women writers living in the diaspora who have translated their experiences into a productive and creative force. In this book, Al-Samman articulates the therapeutic effects of revisiting forgotten histories and of activating two cultural tropes: that of the maw’udah (buried female infant) and that of Shahrazad in the process of revolutionary change. She asks what it means to develop a national, gendered consciousness from diasporic locals while staying committed to the homeland. Al-Samman presents close readings of the fiction of six prominent authors whose works span over half a century and define the current status of Arab diaspora studies—Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamida al-Na‘na‘, Hoda Barakat, Samar Yazbek, and Salwa al-Neimi. Exploring the journeys in time and space undertaken by these women, Anxiety of Erasure shines a light on the ways in which writers remain participants in their homelands’ intellectual lives, asserting both the traumatic and the triumphant aspects of diaspora. The result is a nuanced Arab women’s poetic that celebrates rootlessness and rootedness, autonomy and belonging.

The Thousand Faces of Night

The Thousand Faces of Night
Author: Githa Hariharan
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1992
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780140128437

Winner Of The 1993 Commonwealth Writers&Rsquo; Prize For Best First Book What Makes A Dutiful Daughter, Wife, Mother? What Makes A Good Indian Woman? Devi Returns To Madras With An American Degree, Only To Be Sucked In By The Old Order Of Things&Mdash;A Demanding Mother&Rsquo;S Love, A Suitable But Hollow Marriage, An Unsuitable Lover Who Offers A Brief Escape. But The Women Of The Hoary Past Come Back To Claim Devi Through Myth And Story, Music And Memory. They Show Her What It Is To Stay And Endure, What It Is To Break Free And Move On.Sita Has Been The Ideal Daughter-In-Law, Wife And Mother. But Now That She Has Arranged A Marriage For Her Daughter She Has To Come To Terms With An Old Dream Of Her Own. Mayamma Knows How To Survive As The Old Family Retainer, Bending The Way The Wind Blows. But, Through Devi, She Too Can See A Different Life. A Subtle And Tender Tale Of Women'S Lives In India, This Award-Winning Novel Is Structured With The Delicacy And Precision Of A Piece Of Music. Fusing Myth, Tale And The Real Voices Of Different Women, The Thousand Faces Of Night Brings Alive The Underworld Of Indian Women&Rsquo;S Lives. &Lsquo;

Reconstructed Lives

Reconstructed Lives
Author: Haleh Esfandiari
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 1997-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801856198

Iranian women tell in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. The Islamic revolution of 1979 transformed all areas of Iranian life. For women, the consequences were extensive and profound, as the state set out to reverse legal and social rights women had won and to dictate many aspects of women's lives, including what they could study and how they must dress and relate to men. Reconstructed Lives presents Iranian women telling in their own words what the revolution attempted and how they responded. Through a series of interviews with professional and working women in Iran—doctors, lawyers, writers, professors, secretaries, businesswomen—Haleh Esfandiari gathers dramatic accounts of what has happened to their lives as women in an Islamic society. She and her informants describe the strategies by which women try to and sometimes succeed in subverting the state's agenda. Esfandiari also provides historical background on the women's movement in Iran. She finds evidence in Iran's experience that even women from "traditional" and working classes do not easily surrender rights or access they have gained to education, career opportunities, and a public role.

Memory, Voice, and Identity

Memory, Voice, and Identity
Author: Feroza Jussawalla
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2021-03-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000367312

Muslim women have been stereotyped by Western academia as oppressed and voiceless. This volume problematizes this Western academic representation. Muslim Women Writers from the Middle East from Out al-Kouloub al-Dimerdashiyyah (1899–1968) and Latifa al-Zayat (1923–1996) from Egypt, to current diasporic writers such as Tamara Chalabi from Iraq, Mohja Kahf from Syria, and even trendy writers such as Alexandra Chreiteh, challenge the received notion of Middle Eastern women as subjugated and secluded. The younger largely Muslim women scholars collected in this book present cutting edge theoretical perspectives on these Muslim women writers. This book includes essays from the conflict-ridden countries such as Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, and the resultant diaspora. The strengths of Muslim women writers are captured by the scholars included herein. The approach is feminist, post-colonial, and disruptive of Western stereotypical academic tropes.

Negotiating Borderlines in Four Contemporary Migrant Writers from the Middle East

Negotiating Borderlines in Four Contemporary Migrant Writers from the Middle East
Author: Petya Tsoneva Ivanova
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 152752020X

The book considers the persistent tendency to represent the “Middle East” as a region enclosed in less permeable boundaries. This perspective of enclosure haunts Middle Eastern Studies and is part of ongoing cultural debates on cross-border circulation, currently challenged by spectacular outbursts of violence along resurfacing lines of division. This critical study analyses selected works of four contemporary Anglophone migrant writers from the Middle East (namely, Rabih Alameddine, Diana Abu-Jaber, Laila Halaby and Elif Shafak) to demonstrate that, in spite of the forceful lines that remain after religious, ethnic and political disputes, this region does not exist as a rigidly delimited place in the writing of migrants who reclaim it back from beyond its boundaries. Rather than being a permanent location, it is constructed as a place that flows into other places and is constantly reshaped by a variety of personal stories, migrant trajectories, departures and returns.

Teaching To Transgress

Teaching To Transgress
Author: Bell Hooks
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135200017

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Black Looks

Black Looks
Author: bell hooks
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2014-10-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317588487

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship—in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film—and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: "the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert." As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do.