Women Writing the Middle East

In 1970s Iraq, the Ba'ath Party was at the height of its influence in the Middle East and popularity throughout the West. But a group of activists recognized the disastrous potential of the regime as its charismatic leader, Saddam Hussein, came to power. Haifa Zangana was among those who resisted Saddam's rule, a small group of whom were captured and imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. Now, from a distance of time and place, Zangana writes about her incarceration, the agonizing loss of comrades to torture and death in prison, her safe yet haunted life so far away from friends, family, and her beloved country, and the ways memory conspires to make us forget.

Riverbend, the pseudonymous recipient of a Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Literary Reportage, continues her chronicle of daily life in occupied Baghdad. Drawn from her popular blog, this volume spans from October 2004 through March 2006. In her distinctively wry yet urgent prose Riverbend, now 27, tells of life in a middle-class, secular, mixed Shia-Sunni family. She describes the attacks she sees on TV, raids in her neighborhood, fuel shortages, rolling blackouts, and water shortages, all while offering insightful critiques of the Iraqi draft constitution and American Media. Riverbend reveals how, for the first time in her life, she feels lesser due to her gender. Dispelling reductive, media-driven stereotypes, she explains that most Iraqis are tolerant people, prefer secular to religious government, oppose a civil war, and desperately want the occupation to end.

Seen through the eyes of a strong-willed and perceptive young girl, Naphtalene beautifully captures the atmosphere of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s. Through her rich and lyrical descriptions, Alia Mamdouh vividly recreates a city of public steam baths, roadside butchers, and childhood games played in the same streets where political demonstrations against British colonialism are beginning to take place. At the heart of the novel is nine-year-old Huda, a girl whose fiery, defiant nature contrasts sharply with her own inherent powerlessness. Through Mamdouh's strikingly inventive use of language, Huda's stream-of-consciousness narrative expands to take in the life not only of a young girl and her family, but of her street, her neighborhood, and her country.