Unlocking the Self in Nawal El Saadawi's Memoirs from the Women's Prison

Women's writing is a struggle to reclaim language in a way that will empower them. Memoir form that is known to fuse the personal and political has been embraced by an unprecedented number of women writers from the Arab region in the last quarter of 20(th) century. As a result, writing is emerging from places where writing about certain matters like religion and sexuality is banned and punishable. The paper analyses Nawal El Saadawi's Memoirs from the Women's Prison. It proposes to show how her mind paradoxically liberates itself in the confines of the jail unlocking her individual self and her unmistakeable feminist identity. Consequently, her narrative acts as a site for dialogue, social change and the possibility of saying "we" as well as "I". The memoir also acts as a type of manifesto or announcement of Saadawi's interpretation of the past on behalf of a large group and as a member of the group. Saadawi's writing disrupts boundaries of public-private and personal-political and is motivated by her desire to contest dominant discourses.