Reading Arab Women's Autobiographies

Shahrazad Tells Her Story

Bibliographic Data

ID19904653
AuthorsNawar Al‐hassan Golley (corresponding author), Nawar Al-Hassan Golley
Year2003
Publication date2003-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueReading Arab Women's Autobiographies (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of Texas Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.7560/705449
OpenAlexW2618846687
ISBN9780292798861
Open LibraryOL34809113M
LanguageEN
Citations received19

Authors of autobiographies are always engaged in creating a "self" to present to their readers. This process of self-creation raises a number of intriguing questions: why and how does anyone choose to present herself or himself in an autobiography? Do women and men represent themselves in different ways and, if so, why? How do differences in culture affect the writing of autobiography in various parts of the world? This book tackles these questions through a close examination of Arab women's autobiographical writings. Nawar Al-Hassan Golley applies a variety of western critical theories, including Marxism, colonial discourse, feminism, and narrative theory, to the autobiographies of Huda Shaarawi, Fadwa Tuqan, Nawal el-Saadawi, and others to demonstrate what these critical methodologies can reveal about Arab women's writing. At the same time, she also interrogates these theories against the chosen texts to see how adequate or appropriate these models are for analyzing texts from other cultures. This two-fold investigation sheds important new light on how the writers or editors of Arab women's autobiographies have written, documented, presented, and organized their texts

Art · Literature · Political science · Reading (process) · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Socioeconomic Development in MENA · Arab countries · Autobiography · Autobiography, women authors · biography · Feminists · Women · Women authors

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