War's other voices : women writers in the Lebanese civil war
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
War's other voices : women writers in the Lebanese civil war
(Cambridge Middle East library)
Cambridge University Press, 1988
Available at 12 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. 195-204
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This book challenges the assumption that men write of war, women of the hearth. The Lebanese war has seen the publication of many more works of fiction by women than by men. Miriam Cooke has termed these women the Beirut Decentrists, as they are decentred or excluded from both literary canon and social discourse. Although they may not share religious or political affiliation, they do share a perspective, which holds them together. The author traces the transformation in consciousness that has taken place among women who observed and recorded the progress towards chaos in Lebanon. During the so-called 'two-year' war of 1975-6 little comment was made about those (usually men in search of economic security) who left the saturnalia of violence, but with time attitudes changed. Women became aware that they had stayed out of a sense of responsibility for others and that they had survived. Consciousness of survival was catalytic: the Beirut Decentrists began to describe a society that had gone beyond the masculinisation normal in most wars and achieved an almost unprecedented fernininisation. Emigration, the expected behaviour for men before 1975, was rejected. Staying, the expected behaviour for women before 1975, became the sine qua non for Lebanese citizenship. The writings of the Beirut Decentrists offer hope of a way out of the anarchy. If men and women could espouse the Lebanese women's sense of responsibility, the energy that had fuelled the unrelenting savagery could be turned to reconstruction. But that was before the invasion of 1982.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I. A Different Experience: 1. Danse macabre
- 2. The need for a myth
- 3. In a new voice
- Part II. A Different Expression: 4. Women's voices in Arabic literature
- 5. Responsibility
- Part III. A New Consciousness: 6. Then I would like to resurrect
- 7. Flight against time
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index.
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