Overview
Doria Shafik (1908-1975), an Egyptian feminist, poet, publisher and political activist, participated in one of her country's most explosive periods of social and political transformation. During the '40s she burst onto the public stage in Egypt, openly challenging every social, cultural, and legal barrier that she viewed as oppressive to the full equality of women. As the founder of the Daughters of the Nile Union in 1948, she catalyzed a movement that fought for suffrage and set up programs to combat illiteracy, provide economic opportunities for lower-class urban women, and raise the consciousness of middle-class university students. She also founded and edited two prominent women's journals, wrote books in both French and Arabic, lectured throughout the world, married, and raised two children. For a decade, she ignited the imagination of the press, where she was variously described as the "perfumed leader," a "danger to the Muslim nation," a "traitor to the revolution," and the "only man in Egypt." Then, in 1957, following her hunger strike in protest against the populist regime of Gamal Abdul Nasser, she was placed under house arrest. Within months her magazines folded, her name was officially banned from the press, and she entered a long period of seclusion that ended with her suicide in 1975. With the cooperation of Shafik's daughters, who made available her three impressionistic, unpublished, and sometimes contradictory memoirs, Nelson has uncovered Shafik's story and brings the life and achievements of this remarkable woman to a Western audience.Synopsis
Doria Shafik (1908-1975), an Egyptian feminist, poet, publisher and political activist, participated in one of her country's most explosive periods of social and political transformation. During the '40s she burst onto the public stage in Egypt, openly challenging every social, cultural, and legal barrier that she viewed as oppressive to the full equality of women. As the founder of the Daughters of the Nile Union in 1948, she catalyzed a movement that fought for suffrage and set up programs to combat illiteracy, provide economic opportunities for lower-class urban women, and raise the consciousness of middle-class university students. She also founded and edited two prominent women's journals, wrote books in both French and Arabic, lectured throughout the world, married, and raised two children. For a decade, she ignited the imagination of the press, where she was variously described as the "perfumed leader," a "danger to the Muslim nation," a "traitor to the revolution," and the "only man in Egypt." Then, in 1957, following her hunger strike in protest against the populist regime of Gamal Abdul Nasser, she was placed under house arrest. Within months her magazines folded, her name was officially banned from the press, and she entered a long period of seclusion that ended with her suicide in 1975. With the cooperation of Shafik's daughters, who made available her three impressionistic, unpublished, and sometimes contradictory memoirs, Nelson has uncovered Shafik's story and brings the life and achievements of this remarkable woman to a Western audience.
Library Journal
For Western women, reading biographies of Middle Eastern women is often a chilling reminder of how terrible sexual inequality is outside of the Western world. Doria Shafik was born into a comfortable Egyptian family in 1908, allowed an education, traveled, married, became a mother, and all along the way observed, thought about, and compared how men and women were treated. The 1940s were her heyday, when Safik openly challenged a variety of social, cultural, and legal barriers that she viewed as oppressive to women in Egypt. She fought for suffrage, founded two women's journals, authored books in French and Arabic, and, by 1957, became such a "danger to the Muslim nation" that she was placed under house arrest by Egyptian president Nasser. After years of seclusion, she committed suicide in 1975. Author Nelson (American Univ., Cairo, Egypt) successfully resurrects a woman largely unknown in the West. Hers was not always a happy existence, but her moments of fulfillment still serve as an example for women today. Well recommended for appropriate collections.-Katherine E. Gillen, Luke Air Force Base Lib., Goodyear, Ariz.