Abstract
This paper examines a Saudi Arabian poet, Nimah Ismail Nawwab’s collection of poetry, The Unfurling (2004). It suggests that her poetry upend traditional stereotypes of Arab and Saudi women as they demonstrate a relationship between the literal and figurative space and social change, particularly in relation to gender and culture. Thus, they occupy and define what Michel Foucault describes as a heterotopic space - a space that stands apart from others. The creation of the space allows for a new understanding of Arabic culture, particularly in relations to the experiences of women. Through a thematic analysis of the poems, the paper contends that Nawwab’s poems uniquely reflects heterotopia as they document social changes, particularly in relations to gendered shifts in the Saudi Arabian landscape. As women experience transgressive responses to social change around the world, they not only create a space that retains a strong connection to the patriarchal history of the Middle East and the Muslim world, that space in itself is a unique space within a space. Nawwab puts women at the centre of each experience, demonstrating the creation of a larger space for the female self while physically maintaining the same order of the society.
Highlights
Poet Nimah Nawwab is a prominent emerging voice in Saudi Arabian poetry, and is the first Saudi woman to have a book of poetry published in English in the United States
Time is a prominent theme in traditional Saudi Arabian poetry, and Nawwab's work demonstrates the continuation of this tradition in the modern age
To analyze Nawwab's creation of heterotopia in The Unfurling, this paper examines the crisis of heterotopia in relations to the changing role of women in the poems “Gentleness Stirred,” “The Hidden Layers,” and “Winds of the Market.”
Summary
Poet Nimah Nawwab is a prominent emerging voice in Saudi Arabian poetry, and is the first Saudi woman to have a book of poetry published in English in the United States. While Saudi women are relatively new to the landscape of published works, Nawwab’s work stands out in the way that it shatters stereotypes of Arabian women by relating their experiences to those of other women around the world Her works offer a new understanding of the experiences of Middle Eastern women and the public and private spaces they occupy, reordering them into heterotopic spaces of social change. Heterotopias are located in time and space and yet are removed and different from those spaces entirely, and Nawwab's work is the reflection of the dominant space around women in Saudi Arabia who exist in the inbetween spaces of tradition and modernity and between reverence and rebellion. It is an Othered space that stands with a foot in two worlds: past and present as well as tradition and modernity, but uniquely situated in Eastern cultural practices and understandings
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