| This study provides a comparative analysis of various emerging spaces of creativity, self-discovery and transformation, as portrayed in six contemporary Arab women's texts: Ahdaf Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun, Leila Ahmed's A Border Passage from Cairo to America---a Woman's Journey, Salwa Bakr's al-'Arabah al-Dhahabiyyah la Tas'ad ila-l-Sama' [The Golden Chariot], Fadia Faqir's Pillars of Salt, Riverbend's Baghdad Burning, and Ghada Samman's Kawabis Beirut [ Beirut Nightmares]. These primary texts demonstrate a range of pain, loss and displacement: expatriatism and alienation in Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun and Ahmed's A Border Passage, imprisonment in Bakr's The Golden Chariot and Fakir's Pillars of Salt and war in Samman's Beirut Nightmares and Riverbend's Baghdad Burning. I argue that the different hardships that the authors and/or protagonists undergo serve as catalysts, spurring the women in these texts to construct alternative spaces that pave the way for the creative transcendence of adversity; at the same time, the transformative spaces which the women create become springboards for social transformation as well. In other words, the stories of the authors and/or protagonists in these texts are never merely personal; they traverse the private sphere to incorporate broader issues that, according to their authors, must become part of a national and even global dialogue. These broader issues include, but are not limited to, justice, modernization, the environment, gender equality, and transnational dialogue. |
