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Documenting Arab Women's Literature
By Issa J. Boullata
Joseph Zeidan has distinguished himself by focusing on modern Arab women's literature in several of his recent publications, notably his "Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond" (1995) in English and his "Al-A'mal al-Majhula li-Mayy Ziyada" (1996) in Arabic. The former is a historical and literary study of Arab women novelists, and the latter is an edition and a study of Mai Ziadeh's unpublished and unknown works.
In his most recent work, Zeidan offers in Arabic the most comprehensive bibliography yet, of Arab women's literature between 1800 and 1996. This useful book is very likely to become an indispensable reference work for all scholars interested in this field for many years to come.
There are 1271 alphabetically-arranged and consecutively-numbered entries in this bibliography, each representing an Arab woman writer whose works have been published sometime in the past two centuries. This is no mean figure for an Arab society which is often reproached as not offering sufficient opportunities to women. Most of these entries belong to the 20th century, especially the latter half of it, but a surprising large number belongs to the 19th century. All the Arab countries are represented, although North Africa seems to have lesser contributions than other regions, perhaps because of its long period of colonization by Europeans who discouraged the use of Arabic.
