Review
[H]ighly readable...provocative..
–World Literature TodayClearly writen and well argued, this will be important for large public and academic collections supporting Middle Eastern literature, womens studies, and religious studies at the upper-division undergraduate level and above..
–Choice, October 2001Miriam Cooke is supportive of Arab women writers and sympathetic to their efforts of self-expression....Well-argued and supportive... capable of creating discussion and new ideas.
–-Nawal El Saadawi, author of Woman at Point Zero and Daughter of IsisThis is a very good book--original, highly readable, an important contribution to our thinking about the issues it raises--a solid piece of scholarship. With it, our field will be refreshed and can begin some of the debates anew. Miriam Cooke is just the person to raise these issues.
–Sondra Hale, author of Gender Politics in Sudan: Islamism, Socialism and the State...addresses a very important phenomenon that is emerging across the Muslim world. A significant number of Muslim women have begun a critique of the established Islamic epistemology as the only appropriate interpretation of Islam. By claiming Islam, they are reclaiming their right to their individual identity. Cookes advantage is that she brings to the subject a sensitivity rooted in this emerging politics of identity.
–Mahnaz Afkhami,Womens Learning Partnership
Product Description
Women Claim Islam analyzes the stories and autobiographies of contemporary Muslim Arab women who have literally written themselves into the history of the twentieth century. This provocative collection addresses the ways in which Arab women writers are using Islam to empower themselves, and theorizes the conditions that have made the appearance of these new voices possible.
