In this essay, writer and poet Joumana Haddad tries to answer a question she’s often asked: “what does it mean to be an Arab woman?”

And she manages to do just so, without falling in any cliches nor generalisations in a nuanced yet fierce essay of just a little more than 100 pages. 

She does not attempt to talk for ALL arab women, on the contrary she highlights the multiplicity of “the Arab woman”, something we are not used to hear in a world where we still think Arab equals Muslim. 
And she does so through her own experience: her growing up with literature and “forbidden” books, art, her erotic poetry, her travels and her Arabic magazine about the human body “JASAD”.

This essay should be a must in all feminist reading lists, and if you haven’t read it yet I highly recommend you do, because this is definitely one of those books that tickles the mind and leaves it wide opened 😉