Cirrus@Austlit

'This chapter is a critical comparative analysis of the Muslim women’s corporeal capacitation of hijab as a sartorial strategy as represented in the Australian-Muslim writer Randa Abdel-Fattah’s novel Does My Head Look Big in This? (2005) and the Australian-American journalist Geraldine Brooks’s travelogue on the Middle East, Nine Parts of Desire (1994). Contextualising transnationally the sociopolitical significance of hijab, and reflecting on the geopolitical positionalities of these two Australian women authors, this chapter argues that to homogenise hijab as a coherent identity is a myopic observation. The chapter concludes with the assertion that the significance of hijab goes beyond the orient-occident paradigm; rather it is located in the subjectivity and selfhood of the individual wearer of hijab.'

Source: Abstract

'Like the biblical story of Christ’s birth, Geraldine Brooks’ Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women begins with a woman refused a room at an inn. In Brooks’ tale, the ‘inn’ is a modern hotel in the Saudi Arabian city of Dhahran in the early 1990s, where the Australian journalist is on assignment for the Wall Street Journal. She is refused a room not because she is pregnant – she isn’t – nor because the hotel is fully booked; rather, it is contrary to the laws of the desert kingdom for a woman to travel without her husband. Only a prostitute would do so, as the male receptionist implies. When the affronted traveller tries to bed down on a sofa behind a plant in the lobby, the police are called.' (Introduction)

‘The daily life of Muslim women.’ ‘An understanding of the women behind the veils.’ ‘A compelling insight into women in the Muslim world.’ This is what the blurb of Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women promises the reader.' (Introduction)