A Century of Arab Feminist Writing
Edición de la obra Opening the Gates
| Autor | Margot Badran |
|---|---|
| Editorial | Indiana University Press |
| Fecha de publicación | September 1990 |
| Idioma | inglés |
| Páginas | 448 |
| Formato | Paperback |
| ISBN-13 | 9780253205773 |
| ISBN-10 | 0253205778 |
| OCLC | 21903487 |
| LCCN | 89046345 |
| Número de Cutter | B138o |
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.