Self-Expression

Todd Drake, photographer, has completed a project titled Esse Quam Videri. He worked with Muslims in North Carolina, Manama, and Bahrain to capture a self-portrait that expresses their individuality or identity. Some of the photographs on this site were self-portraits while others were taken solely by Drake. What would each one say to you?

Esse Quam Videri link

"Converging Territories

In reading "The Women's Swimming Pool," one may try to picture Muslim women being covered, not showing any portion of her body. This is a form of veiling. Veiling itself is controversial in Western perception as it may be viewed as a form of oppression. After all, who wants to be covered completely in the heat? The reasons for veiling are being debated among Muslim women. Lalla Essaydi, photographer, presents an exhibition titled, "Converging Territories" that presents a visual of women and veiling, leaving the meaning to her audience.

Brooklyn Museum Exhibition

Examining Veiling

The perception of Muslim women has been presented through Western eyes looking into their world. The identity of females wearing the veils has been perceived as a form of oppression. Through poetry and other fictional pieces, Muslim women are revealing themselves. The veil, figuratively, which covered their lives is being lifted and the complexities of their lives are being shared by many.

In efforts to begin discussion of women and veiling, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sponsored a "Reorienting the Veil" conference in 2013. The website which is noted below, provides an introduction to anyone interested in learning more about women and the veil.

http://veil.unc.edu/arts/visual-arts/orientalist-photography/colonial-harem/

Kishmar Naheed

Brief Bio

Kishmar Naheed, a poet, is known for pioneering feminist poetry in Pakistan. Born in 1947, she experienced violence during partition in Pakistan. She did not attend traditional school as women were not allowed an education; she instead earned courses through correspondence school and later earned a master’s degree in Economics.  She is best known for the poem,”We Sinners Women” and “Anticlockwise.”

“Anticlockwise”
Link to poem

“Anticlockwise” examines the restrictions in regards to society, Islam, and god. The poem examine reversals but also highlights the contrasting views between men and women. The speaker is female although it appears that she is talking to only one person. “even if for my own safety, I rub my nose in the dirt to be, it becomes invisible / even so, this fear will not leave you / that though I cannot smell / I can still say something” (6-9). No matter what humiliation the unknown male brings, she can still feel, speak, and think. 

Audio File 
Listen to the Library of Congress audio files as Naheed reads excerpts of her work.
Library of Congress file 

Hanan al-Shaykh

Brief Bio
Hanan al-Shaykh, a Lebanese writer, whose work explores the ideas of tradition in the midst of modernity. Born in a strict Shiite family, her works emulate the oddity of her father wearing his shawl in the midst of a fairly modern Beirut. She began to write as a form of rebellion against the restrictions felt within her family.

Conversation with al-Shaykh (YouTube)

The juxtaposition of tradition and modern is found in one of her short stories, “The Women’s Swimming Pool.” Written in first person, the story centers on a young girl, whom we presume is Hanan, who convinces her grandmother to take her to Beirut to swim in the women’s swimming pool and to see the sea. The grandmother is anxious in taking the young charge, but seems more concerned for their righteousness for Hanan will wear a bathing suit, exposing her skin. Grandmother asks, “If any man were to see you, you’d be done for, and so would your mother and father and your grandfather, the religious scholar—and I’d be done for more than anyone else because it’s I who agreed to this and helped you” (1730). Both the grandmother and Hanan have covered their hair and bodies. Unlike grandmother, Hanan has shown rebellion even then by not wearing the black stockings in the heat of the desert.

Arriving in Beirut, Hanan sees “the bared arms of the women, the girls’ hair, the tight trousers they were wearing” (1730). The contrasts between her attire and behavior with Beirut is quickly addressed in just those few words. However, the young girl does not pay too much attention to these distinctions because she is focused on going to the swimming pool. Her excitement causes her to trek grandmother along Zeystouna Street, looking for the women’s only pool. She actually leaves her grandmother leaning against a lamppost to find it. Upon her return to exclaim joy of her discovery, Hanan finds grandmother on the cement walk prostrating herself in prayer. “She was destroying what lay in my bag, blocking the road between me and the sea. I felt sorry for her, for her knees that knelt on the cruelly hard pavement, for her tattooed hands that lay on the dirt. I looked at her again and saw the passers-by staring at her. For the first time her black dress looked shabby to me. I felt how far removed we were from these passers-by, from this street, this city, this sea” (1733). The young Hanan views her identity through the eyes of the passers-by when looking at her grandmother.

Work Cited

Al-Shaykh, Hanan. “The Women’s Swimming Pool.” Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3^rd ed. Vol 2. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 1728-1733. Print.

Introduction

Woman’s search for her identity is not new, yet it remains a vision of attainment for many. Much of traditional literature has presented woman through the eyes of man. The lack of female artists (poets and writers) has been the subject of criticism by Virginia Woolf, and Simone de Beauvoir as well as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Simone de Beauvoir within The Second Sex addresses the myths to which female characters are confined: the Muse, the Praying Mantis, or the eternal Mother. Woolf, in particular, asserts that the lack of female artists has limited the scope of the female character to where she is non-existent, but women are complex and those complexities are needed within literature.

In addition to attempting to attain an identity as a woman, females of various cultural backgrounds have fought not only gender but ethnic identify as well. Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, and Jamaica Kincaid have all had a hand in identifying the African American woman, for example. Just as the African American female authors writes of the past, present, and future while embodying the cultural heritage and confines of her culture, Muslim women have done the same. This blog focuses on three such women who explore the taboo issues of their culture from the feminine perspective.