The Politics of Location and Sexuality in Leila Ahmed’s and Nawal El Saadawi’s Life Narratives

Leila Aouadi

doi:10.2478/ipcj-2014-0003

Authors

Leila Aouadi University of Tunis, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, English Department

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/ipcj-2014-0003

Keywords:

Women’s life narratives, Middle East, female circumcision, gender, class, location, Islam

Abstract

This article explores Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage, and Nawal El Saadawi’s Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, A Daughter of Isis, and Walking Through Fire. It contrasts their works and argues that location and genderawareness play an important role in the writing of autobiographies. The focus is on showing how El Saadawi’s positioning as a feminist activist in Egypt and Ahmed’s location in the USA determine the texts’ themes and shape the construction of the autobiographical “I.”

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Author Biography

Leila Aouadi, University of Tunis, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, English Department

Leila Aouadi is assistant professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Tunis-Tunisia. She was educated in England and received her Ph.D. from Manchester Met University. She has published several articles on Victorian women writers and is now working on a book-project about Middle Eastern women’s autobiographies.

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