Virago Press, London 1990. Paperback, 412 pages.
Cover design by Karen Crane/Baker Hill Ltd. Cover illustration by Margo Veillon.

Found this at the Sampola library sale. I'm so interested in Arab writing.

The blurb:
ARAB women today live in more than twenty sovereign states, as well as in occupation or exile; they come from an area that stretches from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula. Here, for the first time, a collection of Arab women's writing is organised within a feminist framework. It brings together many women's voices; some are familiar — Etel Adnan, May Ziyada, Nawal al-Saadawi, and Huda Shaarawi — many have never been read in English before. In these wonderfully diverse documents — personal letters, memoirs, speeches, fiction and poetry, spanning over a century — women eschew their role as silent helpmates.
Already in the 1860s, we see the birth of 'invisible feminism' — read in books circulated in the harem. We read 'the words of the silent' as writers reminisce on childhood, 'Why is a daughter a blight? Why do brothers have the advantage?' We see women refusing to acquiesce: 'At dawn, he slept. At last she crept. Away she went. Away, unwed.' These documents in all their diversity and sophistication not only challenge Arab patriarchy, but also eloquently refute the myth of a monolithic western feminism.

About the editors:
Margot Badran took degrees in Middle East Studies at Harvard and Oxford. She was Visiting Associate Professor in History and Women's Studies at Hamilton College in 1984/85. She edited and translated Harem Years: Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist by Huda Shaarawi (Virago, 1986) and is currently researching on contemporary feminist and Islamist currents in Egypt; several of her articles have appeared both in English and Arabic. She now divides her time between Cairo and the United States.
Miriam Cooke earned her Ph.D from Oxford in 1980. After publishing a collection of translations and a major study of the life and works of the Egyptian male writer Yahya Haggi, she turned her attention to Arab women writers. Her book War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (1988) explores the liberating and radicalising effect of the civil war (1975—82) on the lives and writings of women. Miriam Cooke teaches modern Arabic literature at Duke University. She lives in North Carolina.

Reserved for a young friend of mine

Happy Reading, K!