Contemporary Arab Women’s Life Writing and the Politics of Resistance

Drawing on autobiographical and postcolonial theories, Hiyem Cheurfa examines twenty-first-century Arab women’s life writing as sites for the articulation of resistance to power structures and sociocultural and representational norms. Looking comparatively at subgenres of memoir, auto-portrait, testimony, diary, and digital life writing across different linguistic (Arabophone, Anglophone, and Francophone) and national contexts (Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Palestine, Tunisia), this book explores why resistance is important when writing about the self for Arab women.