Anxiety of Erasure ─ Trauma, Authorship, and the Diaspora in Arab Women's Writings

This study analyzes the writings of Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamida al-Na'na', Hoda Barakat, Samar Yazbek, and Salwa al-Neimi, Arab women writers who experienced the trauma of authoritarian regimes in Syria and the Lebanese Civil War, and lived as diasporic citizens in Europe and North and South America. It explores the motifs of maw'udah (the female infant burial motif) and the narrator Shahrazad in their literature, focusing on the role of cultural conflict and resolution in Arab women's erasure and diasporic Arab women's perception of themselves in Western and Eastern terms. It considers cultural discourses of women's bodies, identity, and subjectivity; their roles as literary women and voices; and nation and tradition as a woman. It discusses how Arab diaspora women writers have redefined Shahrazad's role, traumatic recollections in their literature, the maternal stories presented in autobiographies, their fantasy fiction, the role of women in national construction, the fraternal dynamics of power, and identity renunciation and reclamation in their texts, which include Al-Riwayah al-Mustahilah (The Impossible Novel), The Locust and the Bird, The Square Moon, A Masquerade for the Dead, The Homeland, The Tiller of Waters, Disciples of Passion, The Stone of Laughter, My Master and My Lover, Only in London, The Book of Secrets, and The Proof of Honey. Annotation c2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Hanadi Al-Samman is associate professor of Arabic language and literature in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia.