1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780333103321

Autore

Golley Nawar Al-Hassan <1961->

Titolo

Reading Arab women's autobiographies [[electronic resource] ] : Shahrazad tells her story / / Nawar Al-Hassan Golley

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Austin, Tex., : University of Texas Press, 2003

ISBN

0-292-79886-5

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (255 p.)

Disciplina

920.72/089/927

Soggetti

Autobiography - Women authors

Feminists - Arab countries

Feminists - Egypt

Women - Arab countries

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-223) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Political theory : colonial discourse, feminist theory, and Arab feminism -- Why colonial discourse? -- Feminism, nationalism, and colonialism in the Arab world -- Huda Shaarawi's Harem years : the memoirs of an Egyptian feminist -- Narrative theory : autobiography -- Autobiography and sexual difference -- Arab autobiography : a historical survey -- Analysis of texts -- Anthologies -- Fadwa Tuqan's Mountainous journey, difficult journey -- Nawal el-Saadawi -- The literary and the political.

Sommario/riassunto

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.