A Critical Reading to a Short Story by Ramzia Al-Eryani

Abstract

Much has been written about the theme of encounter between Arabs and the West in Arabic narrative fiction. However, most if not all of the previous studies have a masculine stamp in that they speak about the experience of many Arab males and their encounters with Western females. Many attendant thematic issues have been dealt with in such representations as culture shock, cultural values, personal attitudes and religious distinctions between involved characters. Ramzia Al-Eryani, a prominent Yemeni female writer and an active feminist, however, provides a totally different thematic treatment of this encounter. In fact, she has participated in and contributed to the dialect between Arabs and the West from a feminist perspective. She has reversed the norm by characterizing a Yemeni girl who was desired by an American man to be his wife, not his girlfriend.

In her short story entitled Algaribah, "The stranger", published in her third collection of short stories entitled Assama tomter qutnan translated as "The sky is raining cotton"(1999), Al-Eryani provides a novel treatment to such theme. Furthermore, her representation has a local flavor since she attempts to deal with an enduring problem forthe Yemeni female whose rights to marry and select her partner has been hijacked by her male guardians. She has tackled the issue from a feminist perspective that is quite distinctive from other treatments by Arab male writers. Building on an eclectic theoretical framework, this paper attempts to analyze one of Ramzia Al-Eryani's short stories that are still imprisoned within the local Yemeni linguistic and cultural barricades.

Keywords: Ramzia Al-Eryani; patriarchy; resistance; feminism.