Saman Balaky

Women and Literature: a Feminist Reading of Kurdish Women's Poetry Saman Balaky

This book is a detailed feminist reading of the poetry of a selected group of Kurdish women poets which has been written in Sorani Kurdish. The poets come from two different locations, but are originally from Iraqi Kurdistan. A group of them live in the diaspora and the rest are home-based. Thus, it is the study of the Sorani-written poetry produced by Kurdish women poets locally and externally. The study chooses the time extending from 1990 to 2009 as its scope. There are clear reasons for the selection of this time as it stands for the most hectic period when Kurdish women?s poetry flourishes at a fast pace in southern Kurdistan. The study argues that the liberation of southern Kurdistan in 1991 from the overthrown Iraqi Ba?th regime plays a vital role in the productive reemergence of Kurdish women?s poetry after decades of silence and suppression being inflicted by the male-dominated Kurdish literature.