Motherhood and Memory in Najwa Bin Shatwan’s The Slave Yards
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/17667Keywords:
motherhood, Najwa Bin Shatwan, slavery, umm al-walad, zarayebAbstract
This study argues that female slaves’ experiences of motherhood are negatively impacted by the control exerted by social and discursive patriarchy. Focusing on the mother‒daughter relationship as a vessel of memory transmission, this paper addresses how this control complicates maternal memory narration. Utilizing a contextual approach, this study investigates the influence of patriarchal social and discursive manipulation on the system of umm al-walad or the ‘mother of the children’ in Najwa Bin Shatwan’s novel The Slave Yards (2020). Bin Shatwan’s portrayal of the deficiency of the system of umm al-walad in potentially safeguarding a mothering space for the female slaves showcases the manner in which the mother‒daughter dyad bears the brunt of both the slave owners’ and legal figures’ control. This investigation reveals that this deficiency results in complicating maternal memory narration. Owing to the fact that the author is a historian who has lamented the historical marginalization of the slave community in nineteenth-century Libya, the mother’s story is tackled in this paper as emblematic of a whole community. In short, the loss of the history of the enslaved community is deeply related to complications of the maternal transmission of memories.
References
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Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London and New York: Verso.
Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The Performative in the Political. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
Chang, Shu-li. 2004. “Daughterly Haunting and Historical Traumas: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 30, (2): 105–127. http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/issues/The%20Comic/5.pdf.
Del Priore, M. 1993. Ao sul do corpo: Condição feminina, maternidades e mentalidades no Brasil Colônia [To the South of the Body: Feminine Conditions, Materialities and Mentalities in Colonial Brazil]. Quoted and Translated by Christina Stevens. Rio de Janeiro: José Olímpio Editora.
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Hartman, Saidiya. 2008. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 26, (12):1–14. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/241115
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Ibn Manẓūr, Muḥammad ibn Mukarram. 1956. Lisān al-Àrab [Arabs’ Tongue]. Vol. 1. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir.
International Prize for Arabic Fiction. 2017. “Najwa Bin Shatwan.” https://www.arabicfiction.org/en/Najwa-Binshatwan.
Khanna, Ranjana. 2009. “Disposability.” differences 20 (1):181–198. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2008-021.
Khannous, Touria. 2021. Black–Arab Encounters in Literature and Film. London & New York: Routledge.
Klein, Martin A. 2014. The Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition. Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Latifi, Afifa. 2020. “Review of The Slave Pens by Najwa Bin Shatwan.” Lamma: A Journal of Libyan Studies 1, 121–125. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5nv1j9z0.
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Miza. Younus. Y. 2017 “’The Slave Girl Gives Birth to Her Master’: Female Slavery from the Mamlūk Era (1250–1517) to the Islamic State (2014– ).” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85 (3):557–599. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfx001
Morgan, Jennifer L. 2018 “Partus sequitur ventrem: Law, Race, and Reproduction in Colonial Slavery.” Small Axe 22, (55): 1–17. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689365
Morrison, Toni. 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Phillips, Ulrich B. 1963. Life and Labor in the Old South. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown.
Saleh, Mohammed and Sarah Wahby. 2022. ‘Boom and Bust: The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade in the 19th Century.’ In Migration in Africa: Shifting Patterns of Mobility from the 19th to the 21st Century, edited by Michiel de Haas and Ewout Frankema. London & New York: Routledge.
Stone, Rebecca. 2015. “Can the Breast Feed the Mother Too? Tracing Maternal Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 31, (3): 298–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12162.
Tucker, Judith E. 1983. ‘Problems in the Historiography of Women in the Middle East: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Egypt.’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 15, no.3 (Aug): 321–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743800050959.
Viene, Valentina. 2017. “Libyan Author Najwa Binshatwan on The Slave Pens: Confronting a Dark Chapter.” Qantara, May 6, 2017. https://en.qantara.de/node/27967.
Wright, John. 2007. The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. London & New York: Routledge.
Younis, Abdullah B., and Amir A. H. Amin. 2021. “Alishārāt l-ājtmāʿīt fī rwāīt Zarayeb Al-Abeed” [“Social and Cultural Issues in The Slave Yards”]. TWEJER 4, (1): 807–850. http://doi.org/10.31918/twejer.2141.18.
Ahmed, Leila. 1992. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Aldhamen, Samaher. 2019. “Representations of Domestic Workers in Modern Arabic Fiction.” PhD. diss., University of Arkansas.
Ali, Kecia. 2006. Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence. London: Oneworld Publications.
Al-Naysaburi, Muslim ibn Al-Hajjaj. (2006). “Book of Faith” In Saḥīḥ Muslim [Muslim’s authentic hadith], 23–120. Riyadh: Dar Taibah.
Bales, Kevin. 2005. Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.
Benkato, Adam. (@ibn_kato). 2020. “just received a copy of the English translation of Najwa bin Shatwan's novel زرايب العبيد. I don’t have any comments about the content, since it's been reviewed elsewhere” June 16, 2020. 8:06 p.m. https://twitter.com/ibn_kato/status/1272938668110553089?s=11&t=roXLh4I_IYeWZtBaBJ6JkA
Bin Shatwan, Najwa, and Orna Herr. 2020. “Between the Gavel and the Anvil: A New Short Story About a Libyan Author Who Starts Changing Her Story to Please Neighbours.” Index on Censorship 49, (1): 86–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306422020917091.
Bin Shatwan, Najwa. 2020. Zarayeb Al-Abeed [The Slave Yards]. Translated by Nancy Roberts. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London and New York: Verso.
Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The Performative in the Political. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press.
Chang, Shu-li. 2004. “Daughterly Haunting and Historical Traumas: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 30, (2): 105–127. http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw/issues/The%20Comic/5.pdf.
Del Priore, M. 1993. Ao sul do corpo: Condição feminina, maternidades e mentalidades no Brasil Colônia [To the South of the Body: Feminine Conditions, Materialities and Mentalities in Colonial Brazil]. Quoted and Translated by Christina Stevens. Rio de Janeiro: José Olímpio Editora.
Dhuhaya, Ahmad. 2020. “Rwāīāt al-ʿbūdīa: at-tkhyil at-tārīkhī ū as-srd: nmādhj al’ khlfīt rwāīt Zarayeb Al-Abeed” [“Novels of Enslavement: Historical Imagination and Narrative, Bin Shatwan’s The Slave Yards as an Example”]. Sudanile. December 20, 2020. http://www.sudanile.com/132628.
El Hamal, Chouki. 2014. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gordon, Matthew S. 2017. Introduction to Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History. Edited by Matthew S. Gordon, and Kathryn A. Hain, 1-10. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gordon, Murray. 1989. Slavery in the Arab World. New York: New Amsterdam Books.
Hartman, Saidiya. 2008. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 26, (12):1–14. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/241115
Horowitz, Sara R. 2012. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. New York: SUNY Press.
Ibn Manẓūr, Muḥammad ibn Mukarram. 1956. Lisān al-Àrab [Arabs’ Tongue]. Vol. 1. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir.
International Prize for Arabic Fiction. 2017. “Najwa Bin Shatwan.” https://www.arabicfiction.org/en/Najwa-Binshatwan.
Khanna, Ranjana. 2009. “Disposability.” differences 20 (1):181–198. https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2008-021.
Khannous, Touria. 2021. Black–Arab Encounters in Literature and Film. London & New York: Routledge.
Klein, Martin A. 2014. The Historical Dictionary of Slavery and Abolition. Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Latifi, Afifa. 2020. “Review of The Slave Pens by Najwa Bin Shatwan.” Lamma: A Journal of Libyan Studies 1, 121–125. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5nv1j9z0.
Lovejoy, Paul E. 2000. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 2nd ed. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Mire, Lawrence. 2005. “Al-Zubayr Pasha and the Zariba-Based Slave Trade in the Bahr al-Ghazal 1855–1879.” In Slaves and Slavery in Africa: The Servile Trade. Vol. 2. Edited by John Ralph Willis, 101–122. Abingdon: Routledge. (Originally published by Frank Cass, 1985.)
Miza. Younus. Y. 2017 “’The Slave Girl Gives Birth to Her Master’: Female Slavery from the Mamlūk Era (1250–1517) to the Islamic State (2014– ).” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 85 (3):557–599. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfx001
Morgan, Jennifer L. 2018 “Partus sequitur ventrem: Law, Race, and Reproduction in Colonial Slavery.” Small Axe 22, (55): 1–17. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/689365
Morrison, Toni. 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Phillips, Ulrich B. 1963. Life and Labor in the Old South. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown.
Saleh, Mohammed and Sarah Wahby. 2022. ‘Boom and Bust: The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade in the 19th Century.’ In Migration in Africa: Shifting Patterns of Mobility from the 19th to the 21st Century, edited by Michiel de Haas and Ewout Frankema. London & New York: Routledge.
Stone, Rebecca. 2015. “Can the Breast Feed the Mother Too? Tracing Maternal Subjectivity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 31, (3): 298–310. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12162.
Tucker, Judith E. 1983. ‘Problems in the Historiography of Women in the Middle East: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Egypt.’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 15, no.3 (Aug): 321–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020743800050959.
Viene, Valentina. 2017. “Libyan Author Najwa Binshatwan on The Slave Pens: Confronting a Dark Chapter.” Qantara, May 6, 2017. https://en.qantara.de/node/27967.
Wright, John. 2007. The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. London & New York: Routledge.
Younis, Abdullah B., and Amir A. H. Amin. 2021. “Alishārāt l-ājtmāʿīt fī rwāīt Zarayeb Al-Abeed” [“Social and Cultural Issues in The Slave Yards”]. TWEJER 4, (1): 807–850. http://doi.org/10.31918/twejer.2141.18.
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Published
2024-11-07
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Almaeen, Mona. 2024. “Motherhood and Memory in Najwa Bin Shatwan’s The Slave Yards”. Journal of Literary Studies 40 (November):19 pages. https://doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/17667.
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