Opening the Gates

<p>Praise for the first edition: <br /><br />An impressive collection of more than 50 pieces--essays poems folktales short stories memoirs film scripts lectures/speeches--by Arab women challenging the widely accepted view of Middle Eastern women as submissive non-thinkers to whom feminism is a foreign concept. --Booklist<br /><br />Anyone interested in good writing should read [Opening the Gates]. Here are first-class stories with the energy and freshness we expect from a beginning. --Doris Lessing The Independent<br /><br />This collection of stories speeches essays poems and memoirs bears fierce testimony to a tradition of brave Arab feminist writing in the face of subjugation by a Muslim patriarchy.--Publishers Weekly<br /><br />This impressive collection of writings by Arab women . . . represent[s] a powerful series of vignettes by women who were both insightful and gifted into the lives of women who have lived 'behind the veil' over the last 100 years.--Arab Book World<br /><br />An expression of indigenous intrepid feminism in the Arab world.--Ms.<br /><br />Opening the Gates succeeds not because of its methodology but because of the stories the women tell.--Voice Literary Supplement</p>