Arab Women Writers: A Brief Sketch by Dalya Cohen-Mor : Notes

Malayalam Explanation  

Dalya Cohen-Mor

Dalya Cohen-Mor is a literary scholar of Middle Eastern background educated in the Netherlands and the United States. She earned her PhD in Arabic language and literature from Georgetown University. An award-winning author, she has published several books on Arab culture and society, among them A Matter of Fate: The Concept of Fate in the Arab World as Reflected in Modern Arabic Literature (2001), Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories (2005), Mothers and Daughters in Arab Women’s Literature: The Family Frontier (2011), and Fathers and Sons in the Arab Middle East (2013).

Important Points

• Women in the Arab world have been producing significant fiction for the past half century. 
• Arabic literary traditions had its own narrative types
• short story and the novel were the new genres adopted from the West in late 19th and early 20th centuries
• al-nahda -- cultural revival in Arabic
• emergence of short story is closely connected to the development of the Arabic press
• since WWII, most Arab countries gained political independence, pursued political and social reforms and the condition of women improved
• The spread of free compulsory education raised the literacy level among women and also opened doors to new employment opportunities
• women's participation in public life increased
• in the case of literature,women advanced gradually from the margins to the center of literary production and their contribution to modern Arabic literature is invaluable
• Fiction became the most popular and powerful vehicle of self-expression and social criticism for women
• in the last half century, Arab women writers have brought the art of storytelling to a high level of accomplishment and achieved a remarkable development in theme, form and technique.
• Prominent pioneer authors- Mayy Ziyada(Palestine), Suhayr al-Qalamawi(Egypt), Ulfat al-Idilibi(Syria)
• Even though the presence of women on the Arabic literary scene has grown in the recent decades, there are still fewer female than male authors
• they do not represent all sections of Arab society
• most of these women writers are from middle and upper classes and had the access to education
• but in the developing part of the world, illiteracy is widespread where the majority of women are preoccupied with harsh realities of daily life
•  In this context Virginia Woolf's words, basic assumption that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" is relevant
• As Woolf elaborates, "Fiction, imaginative work that is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners..
• Arab women writers of the privileged social background give inadequate attention to and lack of realistic solutions for the plight of women from the poorer classes of society in their fictional works.
• Even there are many creative writers, only few of them could dedicate themselves entirely to writing.
• Factors that prevent them- family obligations, full-time jobs, financial pressures
• In Arab world, writing of fiction is not considered a profession by which a person can earn a living. Examples:

1. Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz worked as a civil servant in Egypt's Ministry of Culture until his retirement.
2.  Nawal al-Saadawi maintained a dual career- as a physician and a writer
3. Radwa Ashour, Suhayr al-Qalamawi, Latifa al-Zayyat - university proffessors
4. Aliya Mamdouh, Fawziya Rashid, Mona Ragab, Fadila al-Faruq, Hadiya Sa'id - journalist
5. Ramziya Abbas al-Iryani- career diplomat  

• The literary activities are conducted alongside their duties as wives, mothers and working women.
• sometimes economic freedom does not result in (give) intellectual freedom
• Arab women face opposition in their writing career
• their works may find it impossible to be published or acquire a readership
• Nawal al-Saadawi- published her first work of non-fiction Women and Sex in Beirut in 1972. The book deals with taboos surrounding female sexuality, including virginity, circumcision and crimes of honor. It caused an uproar and she was dismissed from her post as Egypt's director-general of health education. The book has been banned in several Arab countries.
• Layla Ba'labakki of Lebanon published her collection of short stories, A Spaceship of Tenderness to the Moon, in Beirut in 1963. The book led to her trial on charges of obscenity and endangering public morality. It was based on erotic descriptions in some of her short stories. She then stopped publishing works of fiction.
• Suhayr al-Tall of Jordan went through a traumatic experience following the publication of her story"The Gallows". The narrative is a surrealistic depiction of a public execution where hangman's noose is portrayed as a huge phallus(male sex organ)- considered as offending public sensibilities. She was sentenced to short imprisonment.
• Zabya Khamis of UAE was arrested and jailed for 5 months for writing transgressive poetry
• Arab women writers encounter opposition from their own families. Alifa Rifaat- discouraged from writing - first by her father, then her husband(threatened her with divorce) and she could only write and publish freely after his death. Nawal al-Saadawi chose to divorce two husbands who were hostile to her literary activities. Dalya Cohen-Mor says, in most instances the attitude of fathers or husbands play a critical role in shaping a woman's writing career.
• Yusuf al-Sharuni - introduction to The 1002nd Night - Man still asserts that home is woman's domain
• Fathima Mernissi (sociologist) - in Doing Daily Battle she writes about her experiences as a Moroccan woman who uses writing and analysis, that are exclusively male in her culture. two main terrorist tactics- 

1. what you are talking about is an imported idea
2. what you are saying is not representative

• Mernissi concludes "the relation between the sexes are always inextricably and unconditionally linked to class relations"
• From the beginning Arab women writers have to assert themselves in a male-dominated arena, from audience to publishers to critics to literary tradition. 
• Salwa Bakr(Egyptian author)- tasks faced by Arab women writers - individuals are illiterate, society is conservative and values are static, never respect women - writer stops to think for whom she is writing. Still they express their feelings and thoughts through their writing. 
• Some authors represented in this anthology- eminent writers- 

1. Ulfat al-Idilibi (Syria)
2. Hanan al-Shayk(Lebanon)
3. Layla al-Uthman(Kuwait)
4. Nawal al-Saadawi(Egypt)
5. Daisy al-Amir (Iraq)

• Rising young writers- Samiya At'ut(Palestine), Nuzha Bin Sulayman(Morocco), Umayma al-Khamis(Saudi Arabia), Sahar al-Muji(Egypt)
• many of their works have been translated to European languages and also they received international recognition
• for some authors, this volume, Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories,  marks their first appearance in English.
•  There are two groups of women writers in this anthology : those from the Arab East(Mashriq) and from the Arab West(Maghrib) 
• this division was due to the domination by colonial powers in 19th and 20thc
• the countries of the Arab East were mostly under British colonial rule eg. Egypt, Palestine, Iraq
• the countries of the Arab West [eg. Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco] were largely occupied by the French
• French colonial rule explains the problem of biculturalism facing North African writers.
• British colonial policy does not impose English Language and culture on the colonized whereas French sought to replace indigenous languages and cultures. The result of this process was that the emergence of whole generation of intellectuals who are francophones and prefer to express themselves in French. Examples: Algerian women writers Jamila Debeche and Assia Djebar, their male counterparts Muhammed Dib and Kateb Yacine as well as the Moroccan novelist Driss Chraibi and the Tunisian Albert Memmi.
• North African authors who chose to write in Arabic occasionally show traces of French influence in their diction.
• Examples: the Moroccan writer Khannatha Bannuna in her story "Shattered Expectations" uses a phrase meaning night clubs is a word to word translation from French. The Algerian Fadila al-Faruq in the story "Homecoming", uses the word miziriyya for misery. 
• Majority of the works from Arab East are Arabic, but those from North Africa are in French 
• In this volume, only women writers of Arabic have been included.