Five Poems by May Ziadeh
“sometimes my soul is wild, / an egret flying far / beyond the ocean’s edge, // and sometimes I curl up, / tender as an anemone when touched, / as salty and as damp.”
May Ziadeh
In Memory of May, by May Ziadé
“Are you related to *the* May Ziadeh?”
Why Bring May Ziadeh into English? Why Now?
We asked ourselves (and each other) why we wanted to bring May Ziadeh’s Musings of a Young Woman into English. Why May? And why now?
May Goes On: (Re)-Introducing May Ziadeh
On May 1st—yes, May in May—the English translation of Sawanih Fatat (Musings of a Young Woman) by May Ziadeh arrives as the second title in ArabLit’s ERASED, NOT FORGOTTEN series, following Out of Time: The Collected Short Stories of Samira Azzam (tr. Ranya Abdelrahman).
An Apology to May Ziadeh
A letter from ArabLit editor Ibtihal Rida Mahmood to May Ziadeh (1886-1941).
May Ziadeh’s ‘The Memory of Baalbek’s Temple’
May Ziadeh stands before the ruins of Baalbek in 1911 and reflects on the nature of impermanence and the colonial designs of Westerners.
Reflections on ‘The Memory of Baalbek’s Temple’
Dana Al Shahbari introduces May Ziadeh’s “The Memory of Baalbek’s Temple,” noting that when Ziadeh (1886-1941) boarded a steam train from Beirut to Baalbek, she returned “not only with a memory, but with a vision.”
Erased, Not Forgotten: Seven Arab Women Writers
To accompany Sally El Haq’s moving essay on rediscovering Alifa Rifaat, we have assembled a list of seven Arab women authors whose writings, and sometimes person, were erased, censored, or marginalized from what might have been — in a different world — their rightful places in literary memory.