Voices of Resistance - by Sarah Husain (Paperback)

About the Book

"Voices of Resistance" is a diverse collection of personal narratives and prose by Muslim women whose experiences and observations are particularly poignant in today's politically and religiously charged environment. The contributors in this anthology hail from Yemen, Iran, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Canada, and the United States.
Sarah Husain conceptualized this collection as a means of redefining the stereotypical depictions of Muslim women that inundate current western discourse on the Islamic "other." She seeks to dispel the image of the veil as the age-old symbol of Muslim women's repression and move beyond sterile representations and narrow debates about the contemporary realities of Muslim women. These women engage in discourses concerning their bodies and their communities. A woman mourns the death of a cousin killed in a suicide bombing; a transsexual remembers with fondness the donning of the veil he no longer wears as a Muslim man; a woman confronts sexism and hypocrisy on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia; and the experience of being judged on the basis of skin color and political and religious affiliation that is far more blatant and ubiquitous since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Book Synopsis

Voices of Resistance is a diverse collection of personal narratives and prose by Muslim women whose experiences and observations are particularly poignant in today's politically and religiously charged environment.

The contributors in this anthology hail from Yemen, Iran, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Canada, and the United States. Sarah Husain conceptualized this collection as a means of redefining the stereotypical depictions of Muslim women that inundate current western discourse on the Islamic "other."

She seeks to dispel the image of the veil as the age-old symbol of Muslim women's repression and move beyond sterile representations and narrow debates about the contemporary realities of Muslim women. These women engage in discourses concerning their bodies and their communities. A woman mourns the death of a cousin killed in a suicide bombing; a transsexual remembers with fondness the donning of the veil he no longer wears as a Muslim man; a woman confronts sexism and hypocrisy on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia; and the experience of being judged on the basis of skin color and political and religious affiliation that is far more blatant and ubiquitous since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

About the Author

Sarah Husain is a Pakistani American activist, poet, and mother who was born in New York City but grew up in Hong Kong, Sudan, and Pakistan. She has been writing since the age of 16 and organizing grassroots anti-violence community projects, linking communities of color around issues of police brutality, anti-immigrant policy, and detention to anti-domestic violence work. In 1997, she co-founded South Asian Against Police Brutality and Racism, a South Asian American grassroots community organization in New York City. She has been published in Breaking the Silence: South Asian Americans and Domestic Violence and in several journals and websites. Currently she lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with her two-year-old daughter.