Remembering Childhood in the Middle East: Memoirs from a Century of Change - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292725477 ISBN 13: 9780292725478

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2002

Synopsis

Growing up is a universal experience, but the particularities of homeland, culture, ethnicity, religion, family, and so on make every childhood unique. To give Western readers insight into what growing up in the Middle East was like in the twentieth century, this book gathers thirty-six original memoirs written by Middle Eastern men and women about their own childhoods.

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, a well-known writer of books and documentary films about women and the family in the Middle East, has collected stories of childhoods spent in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. The accounts span the entire twentieth century, a full range of ethnicities and religions, and the social spectrum from aristocracy to peasantry. They are grouped by eras, for which Fernea provides a concise historical sketch, and include a brief biography of each contributor. The introduction by anthropologist Robert A. Fernea sets the memoirs in the larger context of Middle Eastern life and culture.

As a collection, the memoirs offer an unprecedented opportunity to look at the same period in history in the same region of the world from a variety of very different remembered experiences. At times dramatic, humorous, or tragic, and always deeply felt, the memoirs document the diversity and richness of people's lives in the modern Middle East.

About this title

About the Author:

Elizabeth Warnock Fernea (1927–2008) was Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Review:

... these accounts eloquently portray extended families at work, the needs and responsibilities they represent, and the ways in which modern Middle Easterners never "leave home"... Books of this kind, which reveal the great variety of Middle Eastern Experiences, which bring a human dimension to what otherwise might seem a set of abstractions, and which enable the reader to engage in life events that most of us share, have an important role to play in the university classroom. They are a key weapon in the university's teacher's struggle against prejudice and ignorance."--Times Literary Supplement, 24 October 2003

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0292725477
• ISBN 13: 9780292725478
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 365
• Editor: Fernea Elizabeth Warnock