The Feminine Art
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By: Weam Namou
Genre: Novels
Publisher: Tripoli International
Year: 2005
This book was first published in English in 2005 by Hermiz Publishing. Set in America and the Middle East in the early 1990s, The Feminine Art is the story of Suham, a married woman who distracts herself from boredom by trying to find her nephew, Michael, a wife. The perfect bride happens to be in Baghdad. As the arranged wedding takes a shape of its own, Suham and Michael are challenged to face the truths within themselves that had been kept hidden behind tradition and illusion.
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Admin - 4 years ago
Weam Namou's Response to Readers' Comments on her novel" the Feminine Art" 2010
I want to thank everyone for taking the time to read the Arabic version of The Feminine Art, which I myself have not been able to read due to some language barriers. I have, however, heard from those who read both the English and the Arabic version that in the translation my voice was lost. That’s unfortunate, since that’s where the essence of a book lies – in the author’s original thoughts, personal feelings and particular way of seeing things and interpreting them.
Having read the reviews, I think what happened is that through the Arabic version people read the words but didn’t have the chance to feel the story or connect to the author. And while it’s true I do focus on details, again it’s the author’s voice that makes the difference on whether a character, event or description sounds mundane or not. My work and its comic tone has been compared by a number of Americans to that of Jane Austin, who places importance on little matters—as Emma says, “on which the daily happiness of private life depends.”
I completed The Feminine Art in 1996, at age 26 and loved the entire two year process that it took to write the manuscript, not only because it was the first novel which received the literary attention I had been seeking, but because it was a great opportunity for me to share the non-stereotypical, true-life stories of the people and culture that I love and grew up with.
While I’ve truly enjoyed writing novels, my work over the years has switched to non-fiction, scriptwriting, and filmmaking. The 2003 war and starting a family led me into writing shorter pieces such as poetry and essays and somehow along the way I ended up doing journalism – well, it’s all part of a writer’s life, isn’t it? Or what I’d rather call myself, a storyteller – since I use so many different mediums to share my thoughts and ideas.
Today, while I am still working on funding my first feature film, Green Card Wedding, I’ve directed a documentary called Living Tribal in a Democracy which sheds light on a family of strong and independent Iraqi-born women’s adjustments from a tribal lifestyle to a western one. And currently, I’m working on The Great American Family, a documentary about Dawn Hanna, a woman who’s serving a 6 year prison term. She and her family are fighting to get justice for her. http://www.justice4dawnhanna.com/
The documentary will be released on her website in short increments until Dawn’s appeal date arrives (intended in the beginning of 2011). The first short documentary piece of The Great American Family, which includes the CIA operative’s phone interview, will hopefully be up by the first week of November. To view some promo clips, you can visit this link: http://www.justice4dawnhanna.com/promoclips/
And finally, aside from my more personal projects like a memoir, poetry and essays, I’m working with Dawn and her family on a book about their story.
Maybe in the near future, the readers of ArabBookWorld and I will re-connect through yet another book or project.
Blessings,
Weam Namou
Admin - 4 years ago
من ارشيف تعليقات القراء 2010
Name: Ali Tal
"The Feminine Art" a novel by American Iraqi writer We"am Namou as translated by Elteeb Elteeb, is badly, even amateurishly presented and translated. After this damning first impression, I found the book not only lacking in sophistication and complexity but also political depth, which surely this jumping between civilisations is all about. Instead the feminine Characters seem to spend their time lethargically cooking to entertain their men folk. Is the author trying to suggest that in foreign lands all that keep the smells and flavours of the home-country in the mind are food and marriages? This of course provokes in us a belief that the true "Arab feminine art" is for the woman to remain subservient to her male counterpart. Because of the missing dimensionality to the novel, the reader must understand that Namou is perhaps saying that even in Diaspora an Arab women"s lot remain the same as that of their grandmothers. Unfortunately apart from this great state of ennui of which immigrants normally suffer, from the start of the book there is nothing in the narrative to grip the reader and press him on. Unlike say Nia Vardalos"s "my great big Greek wedding" "the Feminine Art" does not even begin to tackle any of the great religious, cultural and historical issues that first generation immigrants clink to as part of their identity. In preference to the Muslim populations of the Middle East, Christians are chosen as if by design by the immigration departments of USA, Canada and Australia that gradually cities, towns and villages of the Eastern Mediterranean countries are being emptied of a whole pillar of the Arab civilisation. The ruined churches and derelict homes stand as sad and mournful monuments to this fact. Into the heart of the past two millennia, only the Arab Christians can trace their blood lineage to the Arab lands. In those faraway countries of Arab Christians Diaspora large sections have failed to integrate and rarely seem to worry about their uncertain future. Many remain legally threatened citizens and their little shadowy lives are literally wasted in trying to climb out of the hovel of despair in which the threw themselves in and scale the glass smooth faces.
name: Sara Mortada
For me, the novel really starts in about the middle when Seham and Michael travel to
Jordan. The move from the easy mostly safe environment of the United States to the middle east is quite revealing. There, a sense of danger lurks, every issue is at heart of
extreme importance. Whether the marriage works out or not will change the course of the prospective bride’s life. So every minor detail is important.
name: Khaled Mohamed
دهاء النساء رواية تبرز نقاط التماس والتباعد بين الثقافة الشرقية من جانب والغرب من جانب آخر، فالمحرك الرئيسي لأحداث الرواية هو رغبة عائلة عراقية مهاجرة الى امريكا في تزويج ابن العائلة لاحدى الفتيات من
طائفته، وهو موضوع لا يمكن أن نتصور أن تقوم عليه رواية أمريكية على سبيل المثال، فالثقافة الشرقية تغلب حتى بعد أن تقضي العائلة سنوات ممتدة في المهجر.
name:
الكتاب ده عبارة عن تلتميت صفحة بيتكرر فيها سؤال واحد الواد حيتجوز ولا مش حيتجوز وبصراحة يعني يصل الانسان الى استنتاج واحد بس عن ابوه ما اتجوز.
name: الروائي محمد توفيق
من خلال تفاصيل رواياتها الصغيرة المتناثرة ترسم الأديبة وئام نعمو صورة غير مبشرة لكنها دقيقة وعميقة لمأساة العراق، تلك المأساة التي مع تعدد أبعادها سوف يعمل الأدباء على تجسيدها لأجيال قادمة.
name: محمد عابد
هناك بعض الهفوات في الترجمة من الانجليزية فعلى سبيل المثال:
ترجمت
wine cooler
بشكل حرفي لتصبح بالعربية مبرد خمر
في حين أن المقصود هو مشروب عبارة عن مزيج ما بين النبيذ والعصير وتفسر كلمة
Cooler
انه منعش ، وفي موضع آخر يستخدم المترجم مصطلح بكلافا وربما لم يدرك أن الطبق الحلو المشار اليه هو البقلاوة التي نعرفها جميعا.
name: Rita
The experience of reading this novel can be compared to sitting next to a chattering lady
on a long trip rather than a literary experience. This should however not be understood
as a completely critical comment as the author’s chatter is actually entertaining most of
the time.
name: بنت النيل
من الأشياء التي اعجبتني في الرواية الاشارات المتكررة لاصناف الاكل المختلفة وهي في ذلك تبرز مدى اهتمام الثقافة العربية بالمأكولات الشهية وكذلك لأن شخصية البطلة هي ربة بيت تستحوذ عملية إعداد الطعام على
جزء كبير من اهتمامها.
name: ثورة 48
تركز الكاتبة على التفاصيل الصغيرة الخاصة بالثقافة الكلدانية وهو شئ مفيد في حد ذاته لكن هذه التفاصيل في نهاية المطاف لا تخرج عن سياق الثقافة السائدة في العراق وبلدان اخرى في المنطقة ممما جعلني اشعر بأن
التركيز في غلاف الكتاب على الانتماء الكلداني او البابلي للمؤلفة لا يعدو كونه عملية تسويقية بحتة.
name: Rachida
The author’s interest in every minor detail and her constant digressions is interesting
at first but after a few pages, it becomes very tiring and the narrative becomes too
slow. Then the millions of details become simply too much for the ordinary reader.