Description
Book SynopsisThis book draws on an extensive archive of over one hundred oral narratives collected and recorded with Iraqi women in three sites: Amman, Detroit, and Toronto. Nadia Jones-Gailani demonstrates how the relationships between ethno-religious migrants, nation, and citizenship are shaped by the traumatic experiences of forced displacement and integration into new communities and national imaginaries. This book also examines the broader historical trends that have precipitated migration from Iraq.
While informed by research into the archival documentary record on Iraqis in North America, this book is first and foremost a study of gender and memory that focuses on women’s oral histories. By historicizing the process through which ethno-religious and ethno-national communities become fractured and remade, Jones-Gailani explores the expectations and realities of women as the supposed biological and cultural reproducers of the nation. The Iraqi women featured in this book asse
Trade Review
"The book is undoubtedly to become a core point of reference for researchers or anyone interested in the histories of Iraq beyond its national (both spatially and ideologically) borders." -- Enaya Hammad Othman * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
Table of Contents
Introduction: Narrative, Memory, and Identity 1. Gendered Narratives of State: The “Project for the Rewriting of History” 2. Resisting the State: Shi’i, Chaldean, and Kurdish Women’s Counter-Narratives 3. Towards an Affective Methodology 4. Qahwa and Kleiche: Metaphor, Memory, and Meaning 5. Embodied and Political Subjectivities Conclusion
