Reviews for Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories

The average rating for Writing Women's Worlds: Bedouin Stories based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-10-07 00:00:00 Cherin Jackson In the end, I loved this book. BUT FIRST I had to wade through some 75 pages of front matter (two prefaces and an introduction) of the most repetitive, turgid self-flagellation about the crisis of representation, the crisis of anthropology, the crisis of feminist agency, etc that I've ever come across. There's nothing wrong as such with painstakingly theorising one's work, of course -- especially when it comes to ethnography -- but there's a point where self-flagellation becomes extremely self-centering. I mean, if you really want to purge your epistemological apparatus of Western ethnocentrism, don't keep harping on as if the peculiarly Western problem of getting away from Western dominance is the only important thing in the world. Plus, she always stops short of making any strong conclusions, hedging her bets in a way characteristic of a pretty annoying strand of postmodern anthropology -- a lot of, "it seems like theory A is the worst but maybe theory B is just as problematic, oh well I'll just do my own thing that doesn't really deal with the claims of either theory". I felt like all those discussions had a place -- just not in the book itself. If it wasn't for all that forgettable stuff at the start (I felt like I'd read it ten times before in other ethnographies written around the same time) I could pass the book around to anyone who could read and expect them to enjoy it, even my dad! Her writing, from Chapter 2 onwards, is solid gold. Clear, engaging, only ever saying just enough to give context to the long quotations and lines of verse, the rest of the book was the exact opposite of the dry academicism of the introduction. I immediately became interested in the community and came to love the people whose lives she described. So, if you're gonna read it, start at Chapter 2, then read the rest if you care.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-05-31 00:00:00 Cedric Martel As an Arab Bedouin woman, this book was not really depicting the accurate narrative of how Bedouin women truly lived, after several readings on her book, I have found that she mentioned things and stuff that weren't really related to the Bedouin's teachings at all. It was really rude and I really wish she did not write this book, it makes me really question the authenticity of the author and the content of the book. It might have listed "some" of the accurate aspects but as the reader goes on, it kind of just went down bellow the hell hole. Marriage is not really depicted that way, especially their intimate moment thats like pure horrifying tales, even my grandmother did not go through that and my great grandmother did not even go through these kinds of stuff which made me really baffled as a bedouin. By looking at the supporters of the author and the organization that helped in "funding" this project and probably the other projects it really shows why this kind of emphasis on Arab and Bedouin women in Middle - East "Rockefeller's" organization supports the US's agenda in integrating within the Middle-East which shows why she made really comprehensive approaches to the women. In the end what I am trying to say is that it is not accurate! and Misinformative!