Professor Shereen Abouelnaga (Cairo University) looks at how women writers create their sense of self through stories that are often broken, layered, and full of contradictions. She uses cross-stitching—both as a real craft and a metaphor—to show how women piece together identity, memory, and voice across different times and places. By exploring texts from women of various cultures, I suggest that this stitching becomes a quiet act of resistance, helping to shape a personal, though not always straightforward, sense of self. In this way, women’s writing is not just personal testimony, but also a political act that reclaims the power to tell stories from the margins.
A vegetarian Middle Eastern lunch will be provided.
Free and open to the public
