Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing

By: Badran, Margot

Book Overview

Opening the Gates includes more than sixty selections, drawn from almost the entire Arab world. Arranged around the themes of awareness, rejection, and activism, the selections give strong voice universally held yearnings often in conflict with deep-seated traditions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0253205778
• ISBN13: 9780253205773
• Release Date: October 1990
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

easy reading with complicated ideas!

I absolutely love this book.It gave me a wholistic view of women's lives in the Middle East. I love the combination of short fictional stories, autobiographies, and essays. This book is entertaining as well as mind opening.

My thought on "Zainaba"

This is a story about a nurse (Zainaba) who lives in Mauritana. Zainaba and her friend has established a training "programme" for traditional midwives living in isolated communites. As part of the "programme" they discuss female circumcision to the midwives. This story is very informing and interesting.

Required for anyone interested in the souls of Arab women!

Six years ago my girlfriend gave me this book, I am ever grateful to her and the persons who compiled these writings. As an American born Arab woman, Opening the gates gave me a sense of pride to be Arab and to be an Arab woman that no other book has done. I actually read stories in this book that my aunt (a woman with no formal education, living in a small village under Israeli occupation in the West Bank) used to tell me as a child. I was able to see that even in the simplist of Arab women and even as far back as a hundred years, flickers the flame of independence and the yearning to be recognized and appreciated as equal contributing members of society and mankind.