Dissident Writings of Arab Women ─ Voices Against Violence

Dissident Writings of Arab Women: Voices Against Violence analyzes the links between creative dissidence and inscriptions of violence in the writings of a selected group of postcolonial Arab women.

The female authors destabilize essentialist framings of Arab identity through a series of reflective interrogations and "contesting" literary genres that include novels, short stories, poetry, docudramas, interviews and testimonials. Rejecting a purist "literature for literature's sake" ethic, they embrace a dissident poetics of feminist critique and creative resistance as they engage in multiple and intergenerational border crossings in terms of geography, subject matter, language and transnationality. This book thus examines the ways in which the women's writings provide the blueprint for social justice by "voicing" protest and stimulating critical thought, particularly in instances of social oppression, structural violence, and political transition.

Providing an interdisciplinary approach which goes beyond narrow definitions of literature as aesthetic praxis to include literature's added value as a social, historical, political, and cultural palimpsest, this book will be a useful resource for students and scholars of North African Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Francophone Studies, and Feminist Studies.

Brinda J. Mehta is the Germaine Thompson Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she teaches postcolonial African and Caribbean literatures, contemporary French literature, and transnational feminist theory. She is the author of; Notions of Identity, Diaspora and Gender in Caribbean Women’s Writing (2009); Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing (2007); and Diasporic (Dis)locations: Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiate the Kala Pani (Winner of the Frantz Fanon Award, 2007).