SOURCE: Jaber, Nabila. Review of A Daughter of Isis, by Nawal El Saadawi. Arab Studies Quarterly 23, no. 1 (winter 2001): 81-4.

In the following review, Jaber recommends A Daughter of Isis to readers, stating that the autobiography is expertly written and thought-provoking on issues of gender relations and racism.

Seeking a temporary respite from death threats back home and agonizing over living a status of exile in North Carolina, the author takes up the project of writing her autobiography as a way to make sense of her existence. Now over 60 years old Saadawi engages in the process of self-reflection while consciously challenges her representation of “self-life-text” against time and memory. “Rediscovering the past” is fused with the present, adding a layer of uncertainty and complexity to the life she seeks to retrieve/undo. How she perceives the past and what discourses she draws upon are in themselves revealing, particularly, in...