Iraqi Women’s Stories: Reading Iraqi Women Writers’ Arabic Novels in English Translation Using Analytical Perspectives of Feminist Translation

Abstract

This study offers a critical exploration of Iraqi women writers’ novels in Arabic-English translation as a body of work which reflects in many ways the impact of seismic political changes on the peoples of Iraq at different times and places. Iraqi women writers’ novels have been acclaimed for privileging localised gendered perspectives of everyday life over discourses of hegemonic politics in Iraq while negotiating the shifting effects of state censorship, violence, war and dislocation on Iraqi literary output, inside and outside of Iraq. With Iraq’s modern history of war, conflict and fluctuating political contexts, the strategies used to mediate Iraqi women writer’s novels in Arabic in English translation have been varied. In view of many Iraqi writers having to publish their novels outside of Iraq, the politics of Iraqi writers’ location – and that or their literary works - have emerged as potentially charged and fruitful points of debate in contemporary Iraqi activist scholarship. The strategies of translation used to mediate Iraqi women writers’ novels raise interesting questions on how Iraqi women’s stories told from localised, gendered and distinctly Iraqi perspectives were translated into English, a language associated with and at times intertwining Iraq’s recent history of war, occupation and political instability. The aim of this study was to raise appreciation of an important part of contemporary Iraqi literature by putting forward a new approach of reading how Iraqi women writers’ novels move across languages in shifting, charged frames of gendered geopolitical contexts. In this thesis, I analysed the different strategies used to mediate six Iraqi women writers’ novels and story-making in Arabic-English translation: السرة حبل] The Umbilical Cord] (1990/2005) by Samira Al-Mana; االنتظار الئحة على] On the Waiting List] (1988/1994) by Daizy Al-Amir; األميركية الحفيدة] The American Granddaughter] (2009/ 2011) by Inaam Kachachi; السماء بدت كم !قريبة] A Sky So Close] (1999/2001) by Betool Khedairi; النفتالين حبات] Mothballs] (1986(2000)/1995/2005) by Alia Mamdouh and الحب بعد ما] Beyond Love] (2004/2012) by Hadiya Hussein. To do so, I used and interrogated analytical frameworks of feminist translation which are underpinned by the theoretical (and activist) premises that all writing, including translation are (gendered) re-writings of socio-linguistic, gendered and intersectional dynamics of power but yet to be explored in depth alongside Iraqi and Arab women’s literature in ArabicEnglish translation. Inspired by the innovative ways by which Iraqi women writers’ novels have been mediated in Arabic-English translation, this thesis has put forward new ways by which feminist translation approaches can be fruitfully engaged, even reconfigured alongside Iraqi women’s literature, one way being to give rise to a new theoretical term - feminist paratranslation. Intersecting post/colonial and literary gender studies as well as the dynamic fields of translation studies, paratranslation studies, Iraqi and Arab women’s literature, the outcome of this thesis is two-fold: one, it draws due attention to the re/writing strategies used in this tradition of Iraqi and Arab women’s literature in Arabic-English translation. Its findings also offer potentially new theoretical horizons for feminist translation studies and other fields of study engaging with Iraqi and Arab women’s literatures in different literary activist contexts.