“Stories of a story”: rereading the journeys of Hanan Al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra, Sahar Khalifeh’s Wild Thorns and Samira Al-Mana’s Only A Half in English paratranslation

Scholars of Arab women’s writings in translation often deem it essential that readers of translations have access to the original version. This article puts forward another perspective: by using tools of feminist paratranslation, we can read translated works as complex and situated texts in their own right. To demonstrate this, I read The Story of Zahra (1986) by Hanan Al-Shaykh, Wild Thorns (1985) by Sahar Khalifeh and Only A Half (1984) by Samira Al-Mana as English para/translations. The approach reveals each of the works as intermeshed within ever-evolving meaning-makings and commentaries on reading processes, in ways that demonstrate why reading the translated works is still critically relevant. Ultimately, this approach shows how tools of feminist paratranslation can create space for making valuable commentary on Arab women’s writings, whatever the language, time and space in which they are read.