Beyond the front lines : memories of war in Middle Eastern and North African women’s literature

Abstract EN

Significant war literature has roots in works written by men before the twentieth century.

Slowly, women writers who remember and narrate gendered violence in war have been added to the literary canon.

Their works represent a duality in which they are at war with their societies’ adversaries and their own male-dominated cultures.

This article consists of an examination of selected works by women who write about their memories of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and Western embargo on Iraq, the Islamic revolution in Tehran from 1979 to 1984, and the Algerian War for Independence from 1954 to 1962.

Baghdad Diaries: A Woman's Chronicle of War and Exile (2003) by Nuha al-Radi, Persepolis (2004) by Marjane Satrapi, and Children of the New World (2005) by Assia Djebar These works were chosen because they illustrate that gender, race and class provide means by which cultural memory is located in a specific context (Hirsch and Smith 4).

This article is significant because it recognizes often silenced or ignored Middle Eastern and North African women writers’ contributions to the evolving cultural changes of their societies ushered in by major military conflicts, and shows how they challenge what is considered Western-male-dominated war memoirs and diaries.