Event: FEMINIST GIANT & The Strand Present Queer Arab Women
Event: FEMINIST GIANT & The Strand Present Queer Arab Women
Happy Pride!
FEMINIST GIANT has teamed up with The Strand Book Store in New York City to launch a feminist book club! The goal is to have monthly events—a combination of in-person and online—that will feature exciting and global feminist books.
I am thrilled to announce that our next event is part of the Strand’s LGBTQIA+ Pride celeberation and will feature authors Zaina Arafat, Kamelya Omayma Youssef, Alana Saab, and photographer and visual artist Noor Aldayeh for a discussion on Queer Arab Women—art, creativity, protest, and identity. Our in-person event will be on June 27 in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
This event is FREE to attend.
Can’t make the event?
Purchase a copy of You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat here.
Purchase a copy of A book with a hole in it by Kamelya Omayma Youssef here.
STRAND IN-PERSON EVENT COVID-19 POLICY:
Masks and vaccination checks are not required for entry.
Attendees are welcome to wear a mask if they choose. If you do not have a mask and would like one, The Strand will provide masks at the door.
Please note this is subject to change any time before or during the event per the author’s request.
Feminist Giant is a free, reader-supported newsletter that provides weekly essays by Mona and bi-weekly Global Roundups of feminist resistance curated by contributor Samiha Hossain.
Photo credit: Carleen Coulter
Zaina Arafat is a Palestinian-American writer and the author of the novel, You Exist Too Much, which won a 2021 Lambda Literary Award and was named Roxane Gay's favorite book of 2020. She teaches creative writing at Barnard College and The School of The New York Times, and is currently at work on her second book.
Photo credit: Tammy Lakkis
Kamelya Omayma Youssef is a writer from Dearborn, Michigan, with roots in Jibbayn and Shmistar, Lebanon. With an MA in English from Wayne State University and an MFA in Poetry from New York University, she currently teaches poetry at the City College of New York, edits poetry manuscripts, and co-facilitates Habibi Futurism, a generative workshop for collective futurist imaginings.
Alana Saab is an author and screenwriter based in NYC. Her debut novel, Please Stop Trying To Leave Me, is set to release Summer 2024 with Vintage Books, Penguin Random House. She has an MFA in Fiction from The New School, a Masters in Psychology from Columbia University and her BA from NYU, Gallatin. Using her research at Columbia, Alana works with survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking to utilize storytelling as a healing and self-actualizing medium. She also mentors writers who are incarcerated at maximum security prisons in the U.S. Overall, Alana’s work explores themes of mental health, queerness, collective and individual trauma and the transcendent through a metamodern approach.
Noor Aldayeh is a photographer and visual artist from Los Angeles, California. She graduated Suma Cum Laude from Emory University with a bachelor's degree in Film and Media studies in May of 2023. The queer daughter of immigrants, a Syrian father and Jordanian-Palestinian mother, much of Aldayeh’s work revolves around commentary on Orientalism. She is specifically concerned with the orientalist gaze as it pertains to women and gender non-conforming individuals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Her work aims to grapple with the representation of MENA and its individuals, especially in Western media. Aldayeh’s senior Honors thesis, Hayati: My Life / My Love, is her first solo photography exhibition, centering queer MENA women and gender non-conforming individuals and their safe spaces, and still up for public viewing at The Hatchery in Atlanta. Featuring six individuals of the identity from around the United States, this work will continue to be expanded upon post her graduation in order to continue to build an archive of this identity. She was awarded the Dr. Jack G. Shaheen Mass Communications Scholarship by the ADC (Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee) in June of 2022, which is awarded to Arab Americans who excel in media studies; and which funded a majority of her thesis.
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK, in French, and Italian. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.