Arabic Studies Commons^™

A Forgotten Woman Writer: Representations Of Women In Faridah Ahmad’S Creative Writings, Sylvia Azmy

The Undergraduate Research Journal

In her creative writings Farida Ahmad (1939-2018), an Egyptian woman writer and journalist excluded from the Arabic literary canon, subtly presents a different narrative about the leftist movement in the seventies and eighties. This research argues that Ahmad’s works, which present that women’s liberation and nation’s liberation are different, faced structural marginalization. She presents that in her novella, Akhāfu ʻalayka Minnī, using the relationship dynamics between two intellectual leftist activists, Mustafa and Nadia. Mustafa marginalizes Nadia from the political sphere through his patronizing attitude. Moreover, he utilizes the sexual (nation) liberation rhetoric and conservative rhetoric to convince Nadia to be …