Writing Um Said: Representation of Motherhood in Edward Said’s Out of Place

Abstract

I chose to read Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place expecting to find an alternativehistory of Palestine from one of the most ferocious fighters for the Palestinian cause.I did not find much of Palestine, but I did read an intimate narrative of an Arab boy’s coming of age. Said’s focus on his family was a deliberate opening up of the structure of the Arab household, as he attests in the preface to the Arabic translation of the book. This gesture resonated deeply with my own feminist political position on existing family structures as oppressive units that attempt to control and undermine women’s roles in society.