Kurdish Women’s Stories

Houzan Mahmoud

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781772125368
• eBook ISBN:
  9781772125405
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

From all four parts of Kurdistan and across the diaspora, Kurdish women from different geographical, political, and educational backgrounds pick up a pen, reflect, and remember. Going beyond exoticising stereotypes and patriarchal representations, Kurdish Women's Stories gives 25 women authorial freedom to write about their own lived experiences. With contributors ranging from 20 to 70 years of age, we hear stories of imprisonment, exile, disappearances of loved ones, gender-based violence, uprisings, feminist activism, and armed resistance, including first-hand accounts of political moments from the 1960s to today. Conceived as part of Culture Project's self-writing program, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the struggle of Kurdish women through their own words. Contributors: Diba Alikhani, Kobra Banehi, Khanda Hameed, Nazanin Hasan, Nafia Aysi Hasso, Deejila Haydar, Zhala Hussein, Ruken Isik, Seveen Jimo, Lanja Khawe, Nahiya Khoshkalam, Hero Kurda, Khanda Rashid Murad, Rozhgar Mustafa, Dashne Nariman, Bayan Nasih, Avan Omar, Nasrin Ramazanali, Mother Sabria, Bayan Saeed, Bayan Salman, Farah Shareefi, Susan Shahab, Simal (Anonymous), Shahla Yarhussein

Table of contents

• Cover
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction by Houzan Mahmoud
• 1. For the Execution of My Son, I Did Not Cry; There Was Smoke Coming from My Soul
• 2. The Last Cigarette Butt before Execution
• 3. A Stolen Childhood
• 4. Run Away: A Vision from a Woman’s Perspective
• 5. There is a Sorrow in My Heart That I Cannot Console
• 6. The Prison Speakers Played Islamic Verses
• 7. Breaking the Bars of Home and Becoming a Peshmerga
• 8. Fighting an Islamic Regime
• 9. Fuchsia Flower of My Brother (Nasiri Khoshkalam)
• 10. The Explorer Who Watched from a School Window
• 11. The Lost Photos of Engagement
• 12. My Story
• 13. At the Red Prison, They Want Workers
• 14. On Art, Womanhood, Being the ‘Other’
• 15. In Search of Kurdishness: Our History, My Life
• 16. ‘To Be Ruken or Not to Be Buket?’
• 17. Life is an Ongoing Struggle
• 18. A Woman of the Homeland of Rojava
• 19. A Handful of Blood
• 20. Except for Poetry, Nothing Else Shields Me
• 21. Once Upon a Time in Rojava
• 22. A Day at Tel-Rafiat
• 23. This is the Story of My Life
• 24. I Struggle for Two Types of Liberation: Gender and Human Liberation
• 25. What Motivated Me to Write?
• Index
• About the Editor