War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War

Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East

by Miriam Cooke

This book challenges the assumption that men write of war, women of the hearth. The Lebanese war has seen the publication of many more works of fiction by women than by men. Miriam Cooke has termed these women the Beirut Decentrists, as they are decentered or excluded from both literary canon and social discourse. Although they may not share religious or political affiliation, they do share a perspective which holds them together. Cooke traces the transformation in consciousness that has taken place among women who observed and recorded the progress towards chaos in Lebanon. During the so-called "two year" war of 1975-76 little comment was made about those (usually men in search of economic security) who left the saturnalia of violence, but with time attitudes changed. Women became aware that they had remained out of a sense of responsibility for others and that they had survived. Consciousness of survival was the Beirut Decentrists began to describe a society that had gone beyond the masculinization normal in most wars and achieved an almost unprecedented feminization. Emigration, the expected behavior for men before 1975, became the sin qua non for Lebanese citizenship. The writings of the Beirut Decentists offer hope of an escape from the anarchy. If men and women could espouse the Lebanese women's sense of responsibility, the energy that had fueled the unrelenting savagery could be turned to reconstruction. But that was before the invasion of 1982.

Genres: Lebanon

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 1988

About the author

miriam cooke is Braxton Craven Professor emerita of Arab Cultures at Duke University. She has been a visiting professor in Tunisia, Romania, Indonesia, Qatar and Alliance of Civilizations Institute in Istanbul. She serves on several international advisory boards, including academic journals and institutions.

Her writings have focused on the intersection of gender and war in modern Arabic literature, Arab women writers’ constructions of Islamic feminism and Arab cultural studies with a concentration on the Arabian Gulf and Syria. She has published fifteen books and is currently working on a novel about World War II Palestine.

Three of her books (Women Claim Islam; Women and the War Story and The Anatomy of an Egyptian Intellectual: Yahya Haqqi) were named Choice Outstanding Academic Books. Several books have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French and German.