PhD English Literature from the University of Kent (UK). Research interests include illness narratives, medical humanities, and Gulf literature. Author of Head Above Water: Reflections on Illness (Neem Tree press, London, 2022) Supervisors: Donna Landry and Stella Bolaki Address: Kuwait
I learned to read when I was six years old, and the first sentence my mother helped me construct ... more I learned to read when I was six years old, and the first sentence my mother helped me construct was “I can read!” I felt empowered. Ten years later, I woke up one day, with one blind eye. I couldn’t see for a week, and at school, I was called “Blind Girl.” That’s when I realized how people label each other, categorize each other, and reject anything that looks different. By the time I was eighteen, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), which is a neurological illness that can affect any part of the body. You may wake up blind one day, paralyzed the next; but not all people with MS are in wheelchairs. My doctor, however, did tell my parents that I would end up in a wheelchair, and that it was pointless to pursue higher education. But because I felt like there was a ticking bomb, the shadow of loss looming behind me, I took everything two steps at a time. I ran as fast as I could, and realized that I wanted to teach literature. Sometimes, as cliche as this might sound, we give up on our dreams. Or, we put them on hold. But when dreams are threatened, when you feel that loss is inevitable, you have a choice: you either give up, or fight harder than ever before. There were days where I struggled to write my essays, and as you all know, literature majors need their hands to write. We write and write. I needed to learn how to find different ways of holding the pen, managing my exams, and still attempting to keep my chin up. It was no easy task.
Life narratives are rare in the Gulf region due to many issues. Kuwait women’s writing about thei... more Life narratives are rare in the Gulf region due to many issues. Kuwait women’s writing about their lives, bodies, illnesses, and disabilities is almost unheard of. This article considers two texts by contemporary Kuwaiti women and situates their illness narratives within Kuwait’s social context. By writing about their illness and disability, the authors re-claim their voice and agency, writing their silenced bodies as Helene Cixous urges women to write through Écriture feminine. This article examines two texts from a comparative perspective, highlighting themes of disability, mental illness, and healing through writing.
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Oct 31, 2017
T here is a crude distinctionbetween activismand academe, between academeand creative writing, an... more T here is a crude distinctionbetween activismand academe, between academeand creative writing, and between academic and disabled academic. I am an Arab woman, a disabled academic, a creative writer who has found embodied activism in academe. To work from within and without the body is to find alternative ways of navigation. To consider the shamed body is to unveil the social constructions of ableism. Writing and teaching, then, become tools of activism, and it is a slow and painful rebirth to creep out of the once shamed female body. Identity politics has countlessly urged us to reconsider minority discourses but there remains an incessant fear of articulating this “self ”—the self that allows itself to be exposed, whether through writing, teaching, or claiming an identity. Tobin Siebers (2008, 36), in Disability Theory, tells us that “it is wrong to study what you are. This allegation is familiar after more than thirty years of attack against black studies and women’s studies.” I was not exposed to disability studies until I was working on my PhD in England. I began incorporating my own understanding of a gendered, racialized, and disabled body into my academic research.Thereweremany illness narratives that had not found ahome in academic discourse. Throughoutmy academic career, Iwas labeled awomen’s studies scholar, specifically interested in Arab women and postcolonial literature. I found myself aspiring to be identified as a disability studies scholar, yet there was a fear of being ridiculed, of being labeled a narcissist. How could I find common ground between “writing up research” and “creative writing”? How could I rid myself of a shamed body yet be captured in a shamed academic self, one that writes from a very corporeal lens, and accept an exposure of this intimate self ? Siebers contends that
This article uses personal narrative and embodied experiences as autoethnographic strategies to e... more This article uses personal narrative and embodied experiences as autoethnographic strategies to explore the grief of losing a companion animal. It draws on my experiences as a disabled academic who continues to teach and navigate the terrain of writing. Losing my dog, Flake, has left me unable to voice the trauma. Throughout, I draw on various scholars’ interpretations of writing, loss, trauma, and nonhuman relationships, and emerge with a tribute to our significant relationships to others: friends, students, nonhuman animals.
Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Oct 1, 2016
What does it mean to be disabled in a society that is always pushing for normalcy? There has been... more What does it mean to be disabled in a society that is always pushing for normalcy? There has been little, if any, scholarly attention focusing on Eastern perceptions and understandings of disability. Global disability research is still often neglected. We now have statistical data, but hardly any personal, real, and lived experiences of women with disabilities. These voices are hardly ever heard. Academia boasts the flourishing field of disability studies since the 1990s, but has yet to achieve a global perspective. Critical attention is needed. In this comment I attempt to be corrective of this lack of attention to perceptions of disability in the East. I aim to shed light on an altogether different understanding of disability and what it means to be a disabled "Eastern" woman, using my own experience as a starting point.I am a hybrid, born to a Palestinian mother and a Kuwaiti (Bedouin) father. At a very young age, I realized that I did not quite fit any category. As a hybrid, you occupy two spaces, two cultures, and start to feel like you have more than one identity. At school, I was not accepted by the Kuwaiti group, the dominant group, and yet I was not one of the foreigners, the outsiders. Language itself was difficult, I spoke two dialects, and because I tried to fit in, I ended up with many linguistic errors. I never really felt like I belonged. In more ways than one, I was not "pure-blooded" and not the ideal woman. By the time I graduated high school, I was diagnosed with a neurological illness, multiple sclerosis (MS). Add this to the mix: now I was lacking both in bloodline and the body. MS is a chronic and often disabling disease that takes away your basic abilities to function properly. It starts off in the central nervous system, the powerhouse of the body. MS usually affects people in their 30s or 40s. Very rarely does it affect anyone younger than twenty. I was only eighteen, and there was no explanation for it. MS is not genetic, not contagious, and science is still yet to discover why it affects some people instead of others. It used to be considered a disease that only affects Caucasians or people who live very far away from the equator. But it is on the rise in other parts of the world. There is a theory that after the Gulf War in 1990 many Kuwaitis were affected because of the burning of the oil wells and the toxic pollution that took place. I was five years old and living in Kuwait during the war, and I remember black skies, not being able to tell day from night. In MS, the immune system attacks itself, the body decides to reject itself. It mistakes its own cells to be invaders, attackers of the body. What does it mean to say that my body has rejected my own, ethereal self? I had no idea. Clueless as to what was happening, my life changed at eighteen. First, I had plans to study abroad. I could not, because of my physical limitations, as I was having trouble walking and using my hands. I ended up at Kuwait University, where I studied English literature. My passion was English literature, it has always been the greatest commitment of my life. As cliche as it might sound, I devoted myself to my studies during my undergraduate years. I knew I wanted to be a professor and I knew it would be no easy road. I learned to pace myself, to find alternative ways of writing, using the pen. I learned to conserve my energy levels. But mainly, I adopted a few techniques to try and live as "normal" a life as a student as possible.Back in the day, before I ever learned what ableism is all about, before I identified as a Disability Scholar, I was very ashamed of my body. And I was clueless as to how I could deal with it amongst my friends, my colleagues, and my professors at university. When I tried to tell people, their reaction would be one of shock or horror. Mostly, they did not believe me. MS was not for young people. It was a disease reserved for older people. Also, I did not use a wheelchair. There is a stereotype that all MS patients or people with disabilities need a wheelchair. …
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Sep 28, 2021
This paper addresses the representation of female rebellion and madness in the Kuwaiti musalsal ʿ... more This paper addresses the representation of female rebellion and madness in the Kuwaiti musalsal ʿIla al-dunya al-salam which was produced in 1987. The show revolves around two sisters, Mahthootha and Mabrooka, adult women who are residents of a mental institution. The law dictates that their uncle is their guardian and has complete control of their finances. He devises a plan to strip them of their rights and their inheritance by committing them to the psychiatric institution. At the hospital, the audience meets many women with similar fates. The stereotypes of madness present it as dangerous and as affecting more women than men. Male domination features as a recurrent theme throughout, as all the male characters abuse their power, whether in the form of familial or medical authority. The dichotomy of sane/insane is reversed as the characters outside the hospital are cruel, corrupt and yet empowered due to social factors, gender and class. The series raises important questions and considers patriarchal oppression and Kuwaiti women’s experience in both the private and public spheres.
I learned to read when I was six years old, and the first sentence my mother helped me construct ... more I learned to read when I was six years old, and the first sentence my mother helped me construct was “I can read!” I felt empowered. Ten years later, I woke up one day, with one blind eye. I couldn’t see for a week, and at school, I was called “Blind Girl.” That’s when I realized how people label each other, categorize each other, and reject anything that looks different. By the time I was eighteen, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), which is a neurological illness that can affect any part of the body. You may wake up blind one day, paralyzed the next; but not all people with MS are in wheelchairs. My doctor, however, did tell my parents that I would end up in a wheelchair, and that it was pointless to pursue higher education. But because I felt like there was a ticking bomb, the shadow of loss looming behind me, I took everything two steps at a time. I ran as fast as I could, and realized that I wanted to teach literature. Sometimes, as cliche as this might sound, we give up on our dreams. Or, we put them on hold. But when dreams are threatened, when you feel that loss is inevitable, you have a choice: you either give up, or fight harder than ever before. There were days where I struggled to write my essays, and as you all know, literature majors need their hands to write. We write and write. I needed to learn how to find different ways of holding the pen, managing my exams, and still attempting to keep my chin up. It was no easy task.
Life narratives are rare in the Gulf region due to many issues. Kuwait women’s writing about thei... more Life narratives are rare in the Gulf region due to many issues. Kuwait women’s writing about their lives, bodies, illnesses, and disabilities is almost unheard of. This article considers two texts by contemporary Kuwaiti women and situates their illness narratives within Kuwait’s social context. By writing about their illness and disability, the authors re-claim their voice and agency, writing their silenced bodies as Helene Cixous urges women to write through Écriture feminine. This article examines two texts from a comparative perspective, highlighting themes of disability, mental illness, and healing through writing.
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Oct 31, 2017
T here is a crude distinctionbetween activismand academe, between academeand creative writing, an... more T here is a crude distinctionbetween activismand academe, between academeand creative writing, and between academic and disabled academic. I am an Arab woman, a disabled academic, a creative writer who has found embodied activism in academe. To work from within and without the body is to find alternative ways of navigation. To consider the shamed body is to unveil the social constructions of ableism. Writing and teaching, then, become tools of activism, and it is a slow and painful rebirth to creep out of the once shamed female body. Identity politics has countlessly urged us to reconsider minority discourses but there remains an incessant fear of articulating this “self ”—the self that allows itself to be exposed, whether through writing, teaching, or claiming an identity. Tobin Siebers (2008, 36), in Disability Theory, tells us that “it is wrong to study what you are. This allegation is familiar after more than thirty years of attack against black studies and women’s studies.” I was not exposed to disability studies until I was working on my PhD in England. I began incorporating my own understanding of a gendered, racialized, and disabled body into my academic research.Thereweremany illness narratives that had not found ahome in academic discourse. Throughoutmy academic career, Iwas labeled awomen’s studies scholar, specifically interested in Arab women and postcolonial literature. I found myself aspiring to be identified as a disability studies scholar, yet there was a fear of being ridiculed, of being labeled a narcissist. How could I find common ground between “writing up research” and “creative writing”? How could I rid myself of a shamed body yet be captured in a shamed academic self, one that writes from a very corporeal lens, and accept an exposure of this intimate self ? Siebers contends that
This article uses personal narrative and embodied experiences as autoethnographic strategies to e... more This article uses personal narrative and embodied experiences as autoethnographic strategies to explore the grief of losing a companion animal. It draws on my experiences as a disabled academic who continues to teach and navigate the terrain of writing. Losing my dog, Flake, has left me unable to voice the trauma. Throughout, I draw on various scholars’ interpretations of writing, loss, trauma, and nonhuman relationships, and emerge with a tribute to our significant relationships to others: friends, students, nonhuman animals.
Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Oct 1, 2016
What does it mean to be disabled in a society that is always pushing for normalcy? There has been... more What does it mean to be disabled in a society that is always pushing for normalcy? There has been little, if any, scholarly attention focusing on Eastern perceptions and understandings of disability. Global disability research is still often neglected. We now have statistical data, but hardly any personal, real, and lived experiences of women with disabilities. These voices are hardly ever heard. Academia boasts the flourishing field of disability studies since the 1990s, but has yet to achieve a global perspective. Critical attention is needed. In this comment I attempt to be corrective of this lack of attention to perceptions of disability in the East. I aim to shed light on an altogether different understanding of disability and what it means to be a disabled "Eastern" woman, using my own experience as a starting point.I am a hybrid, born to a Palestinian mother and a Kuwaiti (Bedouin) father. At a very young age, I realized that I did not quite fit any category. As a hybrid, you occupy two spaces, two cultures, and start to feel like you have more than one identity. At school, I was not accepted by the Kuwaiti group, the dominant group, and yet I was not one of the foreigners, the outsiders. Language itself was difficult, I spoke two dialects, and because I tried to fit in, I ended up with many linguistic errors. I never really felt like I belonged. In more ways than one, I was not "pure-blooded" and not the ideal woman. By the time I graduated high school, I was diagnosed with a neurological illness, multiple sclerosis (MS). Add this to the mix: now I was lacking both in bloodline and the body. MS is a chronic and often disabling disease that takes away your basic abilities to function properly. It starts off in the central nervous system, the powerhouse of the body. MS usually affects people in their 30s or 40s. Very rarely does it affect anyone younger than twenty. I was only eighteen, and there was no explanation for it. MS is not genetic, not contagious, and science is still yet to discover why it affects some people instead of others. It used to be considered a disease that only affects Caucasians or people who live very far away from the equator. But it is on the rise in other parts of the world. There is a theory that after the Gulf War in 1990 many Kuwaitis were affected because of the burning of the oil wells and the toxic pollution that took place. I was five years old and living in Kuwait during the war, and I remember black skies, not being able to tell day from night. In MS, the immune system attacks itself, the body decides to reject itself. It mistakes its own cells to be invaders, attackers of the body. What does it mean to say that my body has rejected my own, ethereal self? I had no idea. Clueless as to what was happening, my life changed at eighteen. First, I had plans to study abroad. I could not, because of my physical limitations, as I was having trouble walking and using my hands. I ended up at Kuwait University, where I studied English literature. My passion was English literature, it has always been the greatest commitment of my life. As cliche as it might sound, I devoted myself to my studies during my undergraduate years. I knew I wanted to be a professor and I knew it would be no easy road. I learned to pace myself, to find alternative ways of writing, using the pen. I learned to conserve my energy levels. But mainly, I adopted a few techniques to try and live as "normal" a life as a student as possible.Back in the day, before I ever learned what ableism is all about, before I identified as a Disability Scholar, I was very ashamed of my body. And I was clueless as to how I could deal with it amongst my friends, my colleagues, and my professors at university. When I tried to tell people, their reaction would be one of shock or horror. Mostly, they did not believe me. MS was not for young people. It was a disease reserved for older people. Also, I did not use a wheelchair. There is a stereotype that all MS patients or people with disabilities need a wheelchair. …
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Sep 28, 2021
This paper addresses the representation of female rebellion and madness in the Kuwaiti musalsal ʿ... more This paper addresses the representation of female rebellion and madness in the Kuwaiti musalsal ʿIla al-dunya al-salam which was produced in 1987. The show revolves around two sisters, Mahthootha and Mabrooka, adult women who are residents of a mental institution. The law dictates that their uncle is their guardian and has complete control of their finances. He devises a plan to strip them of their rights and their inheritance by committing them to the psychiatric institution. At the hospital, the audience meets many women with similar fates. The stereotypes of madness present it as dangerous and as affecting more women than men. Male domination features as a recurrent theme throughout, as all the male characters abuse their power, whether in the form of familial or medical authority. The dichotomy of sane/insane is reversed as the characters outside the hospital are cruel, corrupt and yet empowered due to social factors, gender and class. The series raises important questions and considers patriarchal oppression and Kuwaiti women’s experience in both the private and public spheres.
Interested authors are invited to submit abstracts to contribute chapters for inclusion in the ed... more Interested authors are invited to submit abstracts to contribute chapters for inclusion in the edited collection "Gulf Women's Lives: Voice, Space, Place". This edited volume will consider Gulf women’s lives by looking at the interrelated fields of writing, gender, and the body, broadly defined. The submissions will emphasize embodiment, conflicts, resistance, agency, identity, disability, and other central notions as experienced in women’s lives and expressed in their narratives.
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