Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives

by Mejdulene Bernard Shomali

In Between Banat Mejdulene Bernard Shomali examines homoeroticism and nonnormative sexualities between Arab women in transnational Arab literature, art, and film. Moving from The Thousand and One Nights and the Golden Era of Egyptian cinema to contemporary novels, autobiographical writing, and prints and graphic novels that imagine queer Arab futures, Shomali uses what she calls queer Arab critique to locate queer desire amid heteronormative imperatives. Showing how systems of heteropatriarchy and Arab nationalisms foreclose queer Arab women’s futures, she draws on the transliterated term “banat”—the Arabic word for girls—to refer to women, femmes, and nonbinary people who disrupt stereotypical and Orientalist representations of the “Arab woman.” By attending to Arab women’s narration of desire and identity, queer Arab critique substantiates queer Arab histories while challenging Orientalist and Arab national paradigms that erase queer subjects. In this way, Shomali frames queerness and Arabness as relational and transnational subject formations and contends that prioritizing transnational collectivity over politics of authenticity, respectability, and inclusion can help lead toward queer freedom.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, LGBT, Womens, Feminism, Islam, Race

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 17, 2023

About the author

Mejdulene Bernard Shomali is a queer Palestinian poet and Associate Professor in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Williams College.

She received a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 2015 and an MA in Women’s Studies from Ohio State University in 2009.

She is the author of Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives (Duke University Press, 2023) and the poetry chapbook agriculture of grief: prayers for my father’s dementia (Finishing Line Press, 2024).

Previously she was an associate professor of GWST at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (2015-2024) and fellow at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities (2023-2024). Her current research concerns affect and embodiment in Palestinian resistance.

Prof. Shomali has published a number of peer reviewed essays on gender and sexuality in transnational Arab culture including: “Scheherazade and the Limits of Inclusive Politics in Arab American Literature” in Multi Ethnic Literatures of the US (also anthologized in Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal (eds. Cainkar, Joseph, & Suleiman Syracuse UP September 2021); “Political Social Movements: Homosexuality and Queer Movements” in The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures; and “Dancing Queens: Queer Desire in Golden Era Egyptian Cinema” in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. “Pulse of Queer Life” was published in Sajjilu Arab American: A SWANA Reader,/i> (eds. Cainkar, Jarmakani & Vinson Syracuse UP, 2022)

Prof. Shomali is working on a full length poetry volume. Her individual poems and creative pieces can be read or are forthcoming in Foglifter Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Copper Nickel, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Shade Journal, Tinderbox, Diode Press, The Pinch Journal, and Mizna, among others.

Reviews

[Daphne · Rating 4 out of 5]

a prescient intervention into Arab/Arab American studies, Queer Studies, and Women’s Studies that brings queer Arab women to the forefront.

Queer Arab Critique is built around four concepts: Queer Spectatorship, Queer space and time, flipped homoerotic triangulation, and queer containment — very Sedgwickesque and very salient.

Shomali coins the term “heteronationalism” building off of the work of Jasbir Puar — “Cultural authenticity is at the core of heteronationalism, where insisting on “authentic” Arab values, identities, and practices operate as a strategy to resist assimilation and colonial erasure. Heteronationalism calls on cultural authenticity to restore a postcolonial Arab subject to its “pure” precolonial Arab status via policing gender and sexuality” (142)

In the analyses of Scheherazade (chapter 1) and Egyptian Cinema (chapter 2), crossdressing by men in brought up in both and since the book uses “women and femmes” language, I would have loved to see how transfemininity fits within a banat/woman centered Arab Critique.

Overall though, Between Banat’s intervention is salient and reorients Queer Theory towards Palestinian Liberation, centers Black Arabs (and calls out the construction of Arabness through anti-Black racism), and the rejection of Bioessentialism and Respectability Politics.

I recommend that all feminists + lesbians read this

[Livia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, creative and insightful, another favorite reading for this class, New Jersey was mentioned. Too stressed to review right now but will paste my discussion post in here soon.

[ODreamer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is a trailblazer, I never found a collection of essays that archives the lives and cultures of queer women stretching down to medieval times till today! A must read, the only limit of this book is its highly academic language, making it a bit of a struggle to understand it by people new to political essays.

[Beau SSPress · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful work that builds upon itself in each chapter. This theoretical text explores queerness in the Arab world in a transnational context, exploring the frameworks that restrict Queer Arab subjectivity, analyzing golden era Egyptian film through a homoerotic lens, and discussing how Queer Arab subjectivity is expressed in society. While the work is primarily situated in exploring the works of those in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt, I think the text does a good job creating a wholistic view of a largely transnational topic.

[lila · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What would it mean to be queer, Arab, and okay?"

this text challenged me in the best way. its references and verbage were a tad inaccessible but ultimately the author succeeded in distilling a huge amount of media and theory in relatively concise space. this work begins to patch the massive gap in arabic, queer, and feminist literatures around what it means to be an arab queer woman-- it centers them (us?) not as victims (for once) but as individuals with their own power and autonomy in shaping past and future cultural realities. the opening chapters covering Scherezade and Golden Era Egyptian cinema were a bit of a slog but absolutely worth it for contextualization of the chapters about contemporary and future media. the book makes a compelling case that queerness and arab identity are not mutually exclusive but in fact inform-- and for many individuals even depend upon-- one another.

the most interesting parts for me were hands down the discussions of arabic language for queerness- how words have evolved over time, whether to transliterate or translate, and the choices the author made to use the terms she does. the legnthy discussion of the word سحق(sahq) as a potential term for queer femme futurity was so hopeful. i was reminded a lot of Marwaan Kabour's "Queer Arab Glossary," which defines terms across the arab world for all kinds of nontraditional gender and sexual expression.

"When we are stifled by limiting discourses, grow weary of the excavation process of our pasts, or continue to feel hemmed or unrepresented in the realities of right now, I suggest sahq can push us forward into a queer future... Queerness is the insistence of the potentiality of another world: a world where queer Arabs not only survive but thrive. A world where Palestine is free. A world where we are at home in the world and the world is a home for us" (174)

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Veramente interessante e importante. Leggermente ripetitivo dopo un po’ ma glielo perdono perché è comunque pieno zeppo di informazioni, letteratura essenziale e offre una prospettiva nuova su argomenti come queerness in paesi arabi, orientalismo e linguaggio.

[Jiewei Li · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting theory and look into how identity forms.

[يوسف عبداللطيف · Rating 5 out of 5]

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