In Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (2001), Dwight F. Reynolds surveys Arabic autobiographical literary productions between the ninth and the nineteenth centuries. He rightly demonstrates that the motivations for writing autobiographical accounts were often multifarious, ranging from creating ‘biographical dictionaries’, ‘works in history’, ‘family history’, ‘edifying entertainment’, to creating ‘narratives of conversion to the true faith’ (2001: 9). However, Reynolds explains that since the turn of the twentieth century, ‘sociopolitical context of resistance to European colonial powers, the struggle for political independence, the rise of Arab nationalism’ and ‘the emergence of a strong Arab women’s autobio-graphical tradition, as well as new regional and national identities’ have all contributed to a shift in the use of Arab(ic) literary autobiography as mainly a ‘means of sociopolitical expression’ (ibid.: 11). Indeed, national struggles against colonial powers and the emerging movements for independence that characterised the region have deeply influenced contexts of literary production, particularly during the second half of the twentieth century, and have brought to the fore the relationship between autobiographical practices, national identity and political activism. As Tahia Abdel Nasser discusses at length in her Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles (2017), ‘Arab writers produced forms of autobiography that challenged imperial cultural formations by chronicling the writers’ self-formation and public involvement in independence struggles’ (11). This is particularly important in relation to women’s autobiographical accounts which explicitly engage with an intersection of issues of feminism, nationalism and (neo)colonialism, and hence reveal highly complex processes of identity formation, self-revelation and ‘sociopolitical expression’. While Reynolds notes that ‘only three [Arab] women autobiographers can be identified with certainty’ between the ninth and nineteenth centuries (2001: 8), such an insignificant number has drastically changed. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a boom in the production and publication of Arab women’s autobiographical writings, most of which are rooted in historical and political events and often situate their postcolonial female subject within a broader national history of social movements and anti-colonial struggles.

This chapter offers a brief introduction that situates Arab women’s autobiographical practices within a modern history of social and anti-colonial movements.