Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing

Abstract

Gender, an issue that has been in the headlines for decades now, has naturally also attracted the scholarly attention of both men and women. In the book under review, Brinda Mehta, professor of French and Francophone Studies at Mills College, inquires into the subject of gender from the perspective of a select group of leading contemporary women writers in the Arab world whose compositions express the complexities of life for Arab women in the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq), NorthAfrica (Egypt, Algeria, andMorocco), and the United States (LosAngeles). The authors are allArabs on both sides, except forDianaAbu-Jaber, daughter of a Jordanianborn Arab Muslim father and an American Christian mother. The novels chosen for analysis have widely varying plots, but all reflect the place of women inArab society and how they cope with difficult circumstances. The book is divided into six chapters, each devoted to one ormore compositions (novels) by a writer or two, whose stimulation to write was derived at least in part from their own personal experiences ...