Min Fami

Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Space and Resistance

Ghadeer Malek, Ghaida Mousa

• Publisher: Inanna Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781926708768
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Min Fami: Arab Feminist Reflections on Identity, Space, and Resistance is an anthology that cradles the thoughts of Arab feminists, articulated through personal critical narratives, academic essays, poetry, short stories, and visual art. It is a meeting space where discussions on home(land), exile, feminism, borders, gender and sexual identity, solidarity, language, creative resistance, and de(colonization) are shared, confronted, and subverted. In a world that has increasingly found monolithic and one-dimensional ways of representing Arab womyn, this anthology comes as an alternate space in which we connect on the basis of our shared identities, despite physical, theoretical, and metaphorical distances, to celebrate our multiple voices, honour our ancestry, and build community on our own terms, and in our own voices.

LANA NASSER

“Aat” and the apple peel

I was not always a woman, an Arab, or a Muslim; these things only came with time, at first I thought I was just... Insan: Human, a person, someone, somebody, often translated as man. (copyright 2013 © Lana Nasser)1

WHO I AM is beyond the labels placed upon me.

“So why do you use them?”

It’s hip to be an Arab woman today, and to be Muslim on top of that … well, everyone wants to hear what you have to say.

To the Western eye, an Arab woman is the oppressed Hurmah of the patriarch, shrouded in black and silenced. Or she is “la femme fatale,” in a belly dance outfit, with a snake dangling around her shoulders, ready to bite.

To the Arab eye, she is the pious virgin, or the whore.

“But to generalize is to err.”

But to err is human.

Who I am is none of those things.

Who I am is all of them

Having spent the first half of my life in Jordan, and the second half in the United States, I straddle two worlds … with Europe getting the better view—

“Oh, shame on you!”

Shame: ‘aar, ‘ayeb

Shackles around my ankles, my wrists, my waist.

Diaspora is the norm … Never at home, always at home, endlessly explaining, endlessly mediating between the worlds.

I was initiated into feminist activism unknowingly:

After living in the United States for thirteen years, I started asking myself about life purpose and motivation. After a 38 day solo retreat up in the mountains of Inverness, I decided to go back to homebase. It took me two years to finally make the move and in the spring of 2009, I shipped my things back to Amman. The woman in me screamed:

“No business going back there, I tell ya.

Life is good here:

Perfect weather, organic produce “local and in season”

You can wear what you want and dance on the street whenever you feel like it

You can talk about the goddess and still keep your head

You can even have a healthy sex life.

Not to mention the greenery …

You wanna go back there and do what!”

Aat International Women’s Day Festival, 2013.

Graphic by Khaled Haider at WISHBONE Art and Design House.

To be a spark, and to spark together a flame to light the passageway.

To harmonize the masculine and the feminine, in a place that needs it most.

For sexual autonomy and the freedom of expression, and life without war.

“Great, Akalna Hawa”2

I didn’t know what to call it then, or what it will look like. But I knew that it involved women and the arts, and that it had something to do with peacemaking. Perhaps it’s a woman’s movement in the Arab world, an international movement … a renaissance; a bridge between East and West.

In a dream, I see women dancing together and drumming towards a new paradigm.

As soon as I arrived to Jordan, I dived in the alternative art scene. A Hakaya storytelling festival was taking pl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Notice
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• GHAIDA MOUSSA
• GHADEER MALEK
• I. Identity
• GHADEER MALEK
• AMAL EL-MOHTAR
• LAILA SUIDAN
• LAILA SUIDAN
• MAHA ZIMMO
• AFAF JAMIL KHOGEER
• DINA EL DESSOUKY
• LAILA AIT BOUCHTBA
• NAWAR AL-HASSAN GOLLEY
• ABDELMAJID RIDOUANE
• LAYLAN SAADALDIN
• AMAL EQEIQ
• SALAM JEGHBIR
• NEHAL EL-HADI
• II. Space
• GHAIDA MOUSSA
• LAILA AIT BOUCHTBA
• AMAL EL-MOHTAR
• JACINTHE A. ASSAAD
• MAHA SALLAM
• NEHAL EL-HADI
• NAYROUZ ABU HATOUM
• RAUDA MORCOS
• SHAHD WADI
• CHRISTINE REZK
• MAHA ZIMMO
• SALAM JEGHBIR
• III. Resistance
• GHADEER MALEK AND GHAIDA MOUSSA
• RAWIA SABELLA
• LANA NASSER
• INAAM
• SAMIRA SARAYA
• MIRAL AL-TAHAWY
• HASSAN ZRIZI
• GHAIDA MOUSSA
• JIHAN RABAH
• SALAM JEGHBIR
• RACHIDA YASSINE
• GHADA CHEHADE
• YAFA JARRAR
• RAUDA MORCOS
• SALAM JEGHBIR
• NEHAL EL-HADI
• GHADEER MALEK
• Contributor Notes