Academic Year 2009-2010: Upcoming Lectures

Mothers and Daughters: A Conversation with Hanan al-Shaykh and Mariam Said
Thursday, September 17, 5:30pm, Cabot Intercultural Center 702
Speakers: Hanan al-Shaykh, a Lebanese-born, London-based writer, author of The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story; Mariam Said, Vice President, The Barenboim Said Foundation USA

Speaker Biography

Hanan al-Shaykh, a Lebanese-born, London-based writer, has chronicled the lives, loves, and roles of women in the Middle East in her lyrical, provocative, and often humorous fiction for the past two decades, and has been praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the most daring female writers of the Middle East."

For years, when Hanan visited her mother Kamila in Beirut, Kamila would question when she was going to stop writing fiction and ask, "when are you going to tell my story?" Hanan resisted--Kamila left seven-year-old Hanan behind when she divorced her pious husband (and Hanan's beloved father), whom she was forced to marry at age fourteen, for another man. Fortunately for us, Hanan finally decided to tell her mother's story. The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story (Pantheon Books, 2009) is a masterly act of transformation where Hanan recreates the life of her mother, in Kamila's own voice.

At heart, The Locust and the Bird is a love story--of a young woman's love for a man who isn't her husband, and of a daughter for her mother, a redeeming, forgiving love. It is both a tribute to a strong-willed and independent woman and a heartfelt critique of a mother whose decisions were unorthodox and controversial. Richly evocative of Beirut in the 1930s and 40s, The Locust and the Bird, opens a door to another world and into the lives to two fascinating women.

Al-Shaykh's other books include Women of Sand and Myrrh, The Story of Zahra, Beirut Blues, Only in London, and I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops. She lives in London.

Mariam Said, widow of Edward W. Said and daughter of the educator Wadad Makdisi Cortas, was born and raised in Beirut. She is currently involved with numerous cultural organizations and groups. Said is Vice President of the Barenboim Said Foundation USA, a project that her late husband Edward W. Said and renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim established. The foundation has several programs: musical education in Palestine and Israel, a musical kindergarten in Ramallah, and the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, an orchestra comprised of Arabs and Israelis. The Foundation is sponsored by the Regional Government of Andalusia and holds a workshop every summer in Seville, Spain.

Said also serves as a board member of the Freedom Theatre, which uses the arts to affect social change, in Jenin, Palestine. The Freedom Theatre is developing the only professional venue for theatre and arts in the north of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The aim of this project is to empower and give voice to the children of Jenin Refugee Camp through a unique programme of workshops and activities in theatre, supporting arts and multi-media, ranging in their emphasis from the largely therapeutic and healing, to the presentation of high-quality artistic products.

Additionally, Said serves on the board of Arte East, a New York-based international nonprofit organization established in 2003, which supports and promotes artists from the Middle East and its diasporas by raising awareness of their most significant and groundbreaking work through public events, exhibitions, screenings, a biennial film festival, a dynamic online gallery, and a resource-rich website.

Previously, Said worked in the financial sector in New York for over 20 years. Said recently published her mother's autobiography A World I Loved: The story of an Arab Woman (Nation Books, 2009). She holds an undergraduate degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, as well as two graduate degrees from Columbia University.

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