GALLERY TALK | Social Fabrics: Interwoven Identities

With both novelists speaking about their books - Al Shaykh’s The Locust and the Bird: My Mother’s Story, Humaydan’s The Weight of Paradise - the panel will explore the female characters of their novels and the societal causes they reflect.

An award-winning Lebanese novelist, Hanan Al-Shaykh’s work is heavily influenced by the patriarchal controls under which she was raised. Al-Shaykh’s work is a social commentary on the status of women in the Arab-Muslim world, in which she challenges notions of sexuality, obedience, modesty, and familial relations. Hanan will be speaking about her novel, The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story, which is a biography of a Muslim woman from Lebanon (her mother), who dared to make her own choices.

Humaydan is a Lebanese writer, researcher and creative writing professor, and author of four books. In her work, both literary and academic, Humaydan is concerned with memories of war and the lives of women. She is a co-founder and president of PEN Lebanon and a board member of PEN International. Iman will discuss the female image of the self and the female image of the other through the female protagonists in her last novel The Weight of Paradise.