Book Reading and Signing with Mariam and Najla SaidA World I Loved
By Wadad Makdisi Cortas (Nation Books, 2009) with a foreword by Nadine Gordimer
June 10, 2009
6:30-8:30 PM
Alwan for the Arts
A direct challenge to the stereotypes of passive Arab woman, Wadad Makdisi Cortas’s memoir A World I Loved, offers a window into the twentieth century Middle East through a fearless, feminist lens of pride and empowerment. Principal of the Ahliah National School for Girls in Lebanon for a quarter century, and mother of four children, including Mariam Said (wife of Edward Said), Cortas dedicated her life to the education of young women. While giving them an education that could take them anywhere they desired, Cortas instilled her students with pride in their own Arab identity and the impressed importance of the Arabic language in the face of pressures to assimilate to French culture. Beginning in 1917, Cortas traces the tumultuous history of the region as she experienced it, providing personal insights into the effects of political and historic events on the daily lives of individuals. This evening, Cortas’s daughter and granddaughter, Mariam and Najla Said, will read from A World I Loved, reviving a voice and a feminist outlook on the Middle East that is often ignored.
Alwan for the Arts
16 Beaver Street
4th Floor
New York, NY 10004
(646) 732 3261
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