“Mirrors of Alienation”: West Bank Palestinian Women’s Literature after Oslo

Abstract

This article examines what characterizes the writing of three prominent young women writers from the West Bank whose work was published in the period following the first intifada and the Oslo accords: Hālah al-Bakrī from East Jerusalem, Amānī al-Junaydī from Hebron, and ʿĀʾishah ʿŪdah from Ramallah.The article shows how those new generation authors succeed in diverging from the ideological style of writing that was characteristic of the West Bank’s women writers who preceded them, while continuing to “exploit” their geographical location and voice the unique reality of life in the West Bank. It shows how these writers gaze as women (“others”) upon the reality and how they create an alternative version of reality and also of the past.