Description
Al-Samman presents close readings of the fiction of six prominent authors whose works span over half a century and define the current status of Arab diaspora studies-Ghada al-Samman, Hanan al-Shaykh, Hamida al-Na'na', Hoda Barakat, Samar Yazbek, and Salwa al-Neimi. Exploring the journeys in time and space undertaken by these women, Anxiety of Erasure shines a light on the ways in which writers remain participants in their homelands' intellectual lives, asserting both the traumatic and the triumphant aspects of diaspora. The result is a nuanced Arab women's poetic that celebrates rootlessness and rootedness, autonomy and belonging.
Reviews
A groundbreaking monograph on Arab fiction by women, intertwining issues of gender, trauma, politics, and war.|Al-Samman examines the writing of six women from the past fifty years to discover the threads that draws their work into communication with one another.|Anxiety of Erasure is the kind of book we need today--both because we need more studies that focus on women's texts and struggles and also because these must be linked together in order to actualize the political possibilities.|Anxiety of Erasure marks a step forward in feminist critique of Arab women's writings. In juxtaposing the traumas of wa'd, or pre-Islamic female infanticide, with the Lebanese Civil War, al-Samman has linked Arab women's erasure, and especially fear of literary erasure, across time. Her close readings of these novels and short stories are original and perceptive, suggesting a novel approach to Arab women writers and diaspora as a cosmopolitan site of literary production.|Al-Samman's analysis is lucid and textually rich. . . . A vital contribution to the understudied field of Arab women's narrative.|An eye-opening read that addresses the depths of the angst of the Arab woman. Al-Samman has used a wide range of literature from a number of authors and pieced them together to bring to light the misjudged chronicle of the Arab woman's existence.|An important, alert voice of literary criticism on Arab women's writing, with a scope that encompasses pre-modern not just contemporary work, and pays attention to roots and literary genealogy, giving it a depth that many who look only at modern Arab women's writing don't have, and her work matters to me, and to the research of my students.|A vital edition to the understudies field of Arab women's writing.|"An important reading of contemporary Arab women writers in the diaspora, including Europe and the Americas, over the past half-century, contributing to the fields of Arabic literature, gender studies, and diaspora studies.
Book Information
ISBN 9780815636625
Author Hanadi Al-Samman
Format Paperback
Page Count 312
Imprint Syracuse University Press
Publisher Syracuse University Press
Weight(grams) 434g