Raising Feminist Consciousness through Literature

Two Women’s Texts from the Arabian Gulf

Bibliographic Data

ID16908440
AuthorsOlatunbosun Ishaq Tijani (Universitaria de Investigación y Desarrollo, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume9
Issue2
Pages145-163
Publication date2019-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Arabian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2153-4764 • E-ISSN: 2153-4780
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/21534764.2019.1738034
OpenAlexW3037405606
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

Through close textual analysis of Hidāya al-Sālim’s (1936–2001) “Kharīf bilā maṭar” (1972) and Najwā Hāshim’s (b. 1960) “Ḥumā fī layla sākhina” (1986), this article examines how literature has been used as a means of raising feminist consciousness in the Arabian Gulf region. I argue that these two short stories, among others, can be situated within the “authentic realist” literary corpus famously championed by the Anglo-American women’s liberation movement of the 1970s–80s. Enhancing the stories’ consciousness-raising features are the facts that they both were written in a historical period when the women’s liberation movement was gaining momentum across the world, and that each of them was first published in a local magazine/newspaper. Moreover, the authors depict not just the ways through which some women of their own generation in particular have been victims, but also, the necessity of female agency (individual and collective) in achieving liberation from patriarchal domination

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Consciousness · Consciousness raising · Feminism · Feminist movement · Liberation movement · Literature · Media studies · Newspaper · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Raising (metalworking · Situated · Social science · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Socioeconomic Development in MENA

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