Many women on many journeys: Haifa Zangana’s Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London in Arabic-English para/translation

Abstract

Abstract Like many Iraqi writers, activist-writer and artist Haifa Zangana took the decision not to write fiction after the 2003 war in Iraq. Her 2001 Arabic novel (Women on a Journey) nonetheless was translated into English by Judy Cumberbatch and published in 2004 by US-based Texas University Press under the title Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London. Zangana’s decision to publish her 2001 Arabic novel as an English translation in the United States raises interesting questions on how the novel was presented to post-2003 US receptions and by whom. To explore these questions, I analyse how (Women on a Journey) journeys into post-2003 US-English translation, drawing on analytical frameworks of feminist translation that assume that gendered and geopolitical relationalities underpin all acts of writing and translation. The aim of my analysis in this article is to re-visit and highlight the importance of this novel in Arabic and English publication as an innovative genre of (translated) Iraqi women’s literature. My analysis also invites engagement and debate on how feminist translation analytical approaches can help us revisit both versions of the novel as connective kaleidoscopic expressions of inter-weaving voices which mediate both Haifa Zangana’s evolving contexts of activist writing on Iraq and Iraqi women as well as the dynamic politics of Iraqi women’s literature in Arabic and English translation.