"The Other Voice": New Generation Palestinian Women's Writing as Reflected in Palestinian Anthologies

This article examines two anthologies of Palestinian women's literature, published in Ramallah in the 1990s. Its objective is to map the writing trends of new generation Palestinian women writers whose works appear in the anthologies and to highlight the factors and constraints that influence their writing. The article reveals that while only a few stories focus wholly on a description of the female "self", most of the stories relate to the Palestinian political reality in two principal ways: one which blurs the female presence almost completely, second which portrays the interaction between the political-national reality and the "female" reality. The article also illustrates how the nature of Palestinian women's literature is influenced by the location of the writer and also by the extent of her desire to be "accepted" culturally and so to be included in anthologies such as those under discussion.