Censored voices, global circuits: Arab women writers and the politics of visibility

Abstract This article explores the transnational reception of Arab women writers whose works are frequently subject to censorship in their home countries for addressing so-called taboo subjects such as gender and sexuality. It focuses on the novels Women and Sex (1972) by Nawal El Saadawi and Girls of Riyadh (2005) by Rajaa Alsanea and considers how these works are both situated within a broader discourse on Arab women’s literature. This article argues that although the global literary marketplace offers platforms for these voices, it also casts Arab women as either victims of repression or figures of exotic defiance. Both authors reframe the political as something deeply embedded in everyday life. Rather than treating the visibility of these texts as purely emancipatory, this article demonstrates how relationships, especially those formed between women in the private sphere and epistolary form, do not simply reflect political positions but actively constitute them. In tracing how such texts move across geopolitical and cultural borders, the article ultimately calls for a more situated reading practice, one attentive to how local contexts, censorship regimes, and market demands shape what stories are told, and how they are heard.