Said Memoir

Jean Said Makdisi’s new book Teta, Mother and Me is reviewed in the Daily Star. It’s a memoir of three generations of women in the Said family (yes, that Said.)

[T]he book is much more than just a memoir – it is a discovery for both the author and the reader of a richer and more complex past for Arab women than both ever would have imagined.

Using unpublished family documents, the memories of friends and acquaintances, and histories of the region and period, Makdisi traces her family’s personal story against the backdrop of political events as they take place in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and the United States. The story details her grandmother’s early childhood in Ottoman Syria in the 1880’s; her mother’s experiences of two world wars and their repercussions for the Middle East; and the author’s own experience of raising a family in Beirut, amidst the endless, futile, disillusioning fratricide of the Lebanese civil war.

Said Makdisi’s memoir is as yet unavaible here, but you can check out her previous book, Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir.

Thanks to Jonathan for the link.