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A review by clarabooksit
Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World by Zahra Hankir
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
This is a powerful, eye-opening collection of essays from Arab women writing about their experiences as journalists and photojournalists in the Arab world. While most of the women discuss or at least touch on the Arab Spring, each essay takes a different approach. As a whole the collection tackles so many subjects from war to displacement to censorship to patriarchy to refugees to misogyny to being detained and interrogated to having two lives—one as an Arab woman, the other as a war correspondent—to death of loved ones and so much more. It’s this range of writing that makes this book really come alive: taken on their own, each essay is good, but together they give the book a scope that is breathtaking.
It would be remiss of me to not mention how difficult some of these essays are to read. There is a lot of heartbreak and violence in these pages. But I genuinely loved reading from each of these women’s perspectives and what they chose to write about when asked to write about their experiences. The stand out essays for me were: The Woman Question by Hannah Allam, Spin by Natacha Yazbeck, and Just Stop by Eman Helal.
I have a few very minor criticisms—the foreword by Christiane Amanpour was kind of meh, there’s one essay that is startlingly different from the rest but I think I understand why it was included, and the organization didn’t quite work for me—but overall, this is a moving, important collection and I highly recommend it. I learned a lot. Definitely a top read of the year.
It would be remiss of me to not mention how difficult some of these essays are to read. There is a lot of heartbreak and violence in these pages. But I genuinely loved reading from each of these women’s perspectives and what they chose to write about when asked to write about their experiences. The stand out essays for me were: The Woman Question by Hannah Allam, Spin by Natacha Yazbeck, and Just Stop by Eman Helal.
I have a few very minor criticisms—the foreword by Christiane Amanpour was kind of meh, there’s one essay that is startlingly different from the rest but I think I understand why it was included, and the organization didn’t quite work for me—but overall, this is a moving, important collection and I highly recommend it. I learned a lot. Definitely a top read of the year.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Murder, Sexual harassment, Torture, Violence, Genocide, Gun violence, Police brutality, Sexism, Body shaming, Child death, Death, Misogyny, and War
Moderate: Sexual violence, Kidnapping, and Sexual assault