Antelak Al-Mutawakel Gender and the writing of Yemeni women writers

Dutch University Press FSW publicatiereeks 16,5 x 24 cm 206 pag. € 24,50 ISBN 978 90 3619 122 7 NUR 740 2004

This book is about Yemeni women writers and gender. It investigates how and why Yemeni women writers came to be neglected and the influence of gender on the lives and works of Yemeni women writers. In addition, it aims to restore these's women's corpus of texts, names and lives. With a concern for the particularities of each nation and culture, it describes differences in cultures, and creates a new idiom to express similarities and common ground. The book aspires to relate this issue to the theories and discussions of international women's studies. Thus, the approach of gender as an analytical tool with a concern for issues that affect the writing and reading of texts, and Virginia Woolf's approach in A Room of One's Own, were chosen as the appropriate theoretical framework to do justice to the Arab-Yemeni cultural particularities. Antelak al-Mutawakel - born and living in Sana'a, Yemen - studied English Literature at Sana'a University. After her graduation in 1985, she lectured at the Department of English Literature. In December 1997 she became a PhD student at Tilburg University. This book results from her PhD project. Table of contents 1. Introduction: Yemeni women's historical background 2. Theoretical background and framework 3. The history of poetry, the short story, and the novel 4. Self-liberation and national struggle in early Yemeni women's short stories 5. Gender and the process of writing 6. A woman writer's life story: Nabilah al-Zubair 7. Conclusions and implications Appendix 1: Bibliography and biographical sketches of Yemeni women writers Appendix 2: Transliteration note Summary Samenvatting Arabic summary Bestel/Order