Women Writers
The importance of writing: Speak your Mind
The Story of Arab women novelists reflects, in many ways,
the story of most women in different disciplines: it is the story of
abundant creativity with very few rights or sometimes no rights at all. In
the recent half-century, Arab woman writers have acquired a distinctive
position in the field of literature, with an impressive richness, diversity
and creativity in their writing. Contemporary Arab women authors have
written themselves and their characters into the global community, adapting
to a wide range of environments, crossing both physical and virtual borders.
The majority of prominent and important issues Arab women
writers discuss in their novels deal with issues about love, marriage,
dominance of men, and the roles they play in society. Most of them attempt
to shake the previously held ideas about Arab society; they want to abandon
the clichés and stereotypes that exist in the Arab world. For many, the
picture of Arab society is one represented by women who are the shadow of
their husband, and don’t have a say in anything, but this is not the case at
least in most Arab countries. Therefore, it is important for literature to
be written with different views and ideas, ones that actually exists in
reality. And here the burden falls on the women shoulders. It is their
choice to write down their own stories or let men pass it on in the way they
perceive and understand them.
There are many prominent writers in the Middle East, some
of these are: Hafsa Zinai Koudil, an Algerian write and film maker, Aisha
Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian writer and university professor, Nawal El Saadawi,
and Egyptian writer feminist, sociologist, medical doctor, Sheikha Mubarak
Al Nakhy, an Emirati author, Emily Nasrallah, a Lebanese writer, Mai
Ghoussoub, a Lebanese writer and artist, Rose Ghurayib, a Lebanese writer.
Hence, Arab women authors should explore the intricacies
of their lives as women, of their families and of family relations. It is
the literature in which a woman is able to express her inner feelings and
subtle sensitivity in female spheres, which are out of a man's reach.
'Women's literature describes female habits and modes of thinking which no
man writer, however talented he might be, could reach.' Women attempt to
make it known their cries for justice, equality a need for social change.
From here on, a new, confident and creative Arab woman should and will
emerge who will break all stereotypes of women's weaknesses and inferiority.
Literature, we are told, is subversive because it probes
the deepest strata of the psyche and the imagination and remains
unanswerable to governments. Arab writers, both men and women, heroes and
heroines, are in constant search of their authentic selves in an attempt at
understanding their realities and, more crucially, redefining the meaning of
their lives. Arab women, in fact and fiction, have been dynamic and changing
factors. Underlying their "feminism” is not just the assertion of a new hope
for themselves, but a hope for a new kind of world for both men and women. |
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