Memoirs of an early Arab feminist : the life and activism of Anbara Salam Khalidi /
Anbarah Salam Khalidi ; foreword by Marina Warner ; translated by Tarif Khalidi.
- London : Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, Pluto Press ; 2013.
- xiv, 169 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
First published in Arabic, Beirut, 1978. Includes index.
Upbringing and family -- Political events before the First World War -- An engagement that was not completed -- The war's end -- Society for women's renaissance -- Back to the literary scene of the 1920s and beyond -- The story of my marriage -- Exile.
Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist is the first English translation of the memoirs of Anbara Salam Khalidi, the iconic Arab feminist. At a time when women are playing a leading role in the Arab Spring, this book brings to life an earlier period of social turmoil and women's activism through one remarkable life.Anbara Salam was born in 1897 to a notable Sunni Muslim family of Beirut. She grew up in 'Greater Syria', in which unhindered travel between Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus was possible, and wrote a series of newspaper articles calling on women to fight for their rights within the Ottoman Empire. In 1927 she caused a public scandal by removing her veil during a lecture at the American University of Beirut.Later she translated Homer and Virgil into Arabic and fled from Jerusalem to Beirut following the establishment of Israel in 1948. She died in Beirut in 1986. These memoirs have long been acclaimed by Middle East historians as an essential resource for the social history of Beirut and the larger Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries.