Desert voices: Bedouin women s poetry in Saudi Arabia

The Bedouin, or desert dwellers , have a rich cultural heritage often expressed through music and poetry. Here, Moneera Al-Ghadeer provides us with the first comparative reading of women s oral poetry from Saudi Arabia. She examines women s lyrics of love, desire, mourning and grievance. We come to understand Bedouin mores and - most significantly - the unique description of a desert that is consistently held to be infinite, evocative, stimulating and an eternal freedom. As the first English translation and analysis of this poetry, "Desert Voices" is both a gesture to preserving the oral poetic tradition of Bedouin women and a radical critique addressing the exclusion of their poetry from current academic literary studies. The book provides invaluable material for reflection in the debates around oral culture and women s poetic composition while it translates, presents and critically examins a genre, which opens Arabic poetry and literature to contemporary theory and criticism. © 2009 Moneera Al-Ghadeer. All rights reserved.