Jean Said Makdisi
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{{short description|Palestinian writer}}
Jean Said Makdisi ({{langx|ar|جين سعيد مقدسي}}) (born 1940) is a Palestinian writer and independent scholar, best known for her autobiographical writing.{{cite book|last=Fister|first=Barbara|authorlink=Barbara Fister|title=Third World Women's Literatures: A Dictionary and Guide to Materials in English|url=https://archive.org/details/thirdworldwomens0000fist|url-access=registration|year=1995|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-28988-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/thirdworldwomens0000fist/page/193 193]|chapter=Makdisi, Jean Said}}
Life
Jean Said Makdisi was born in Jerusalem, British Mandate Palestine, to a Palestinian family. The younger sister of Rosemarie Said Zahlan and Edward Said, she was raised in Egypt and educated in the United States and England.[https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/makdisi-jean-said-1940 Makdisi, Jean Said 1940–], Contemporary Authors, encyclopedia.com. Accessed February 11, 2020. She married a Lebanese academic of Palestinian origin, Samir Makdisi. They lived in America before moving to Beirut, Lebanon, in 1972, where she taught English and Humanities at the Beirut University College.[https://alwarsha.org/2017/02/28/jean-said-makdisi/ Jean Said Makdisi] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210121141143/https://alwarsha.org/2017/02/28/jean-said-makdisi/ |date=January 21, 2021 }}, The Knowledge Workshop, alwarsha.org. They remained in Beirut throughout the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Lebanon War. Makdisi documented the city's decline in her first book, Beirut Fragments: a war memoir (1989):
{{quote|Today, the Beiruti's eye is constantly confronted by buildings in various stages of collapse; broken glass and torn awnings; dangling and broken electric signs: that once glittered in advertising gaudiness; shabby, dirty, overcrowded streets; blocks full of refugees, their children playing in the piles of rubbish scattered here and there, monuments to the war; telephone and electric lines hanging loosely from bent poles; stray dogs and cats, diseased and slow, sniffing at the garbage on empty corners.Beirut Fragments, excerpted in Jean Said Makdisi, [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-09-09-op-665-story.html Book Mark : Living in Beirut: ‘A Tightrope Over an Abyss of Panic’], Los Angeles Times, September 9, 1990.}}
She is the mother of the literary critic Saree Makdisi and historian Ussama Makdisi.{{Cite web |last=IMEU |title=Saree Makdisi: Professor and Commentator {{!}} IMEU |url=https://imeu.org/article/saree-makdisi |access-date=2023-11-29 |website=imeu.org |language=en}}
Works
- Beirut fragments: a war memoir. New York: Persea Books, 1989
- Teta, mother, and me: an Arab woman's memoir. London : Saqi, 2005
- (ed. with Martin Asser) My life in the PLO: the inside story of the Palestinian struggle by Shafiq al-Hout. Translated by Hader al-Hout and Laila Othman. London: Pluto Press, 2010
- (ed. with Noha Bayoumi and Rafif Rida Sidawi) Arab feminisms: gender and equality in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris, 2013
References
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Category:20th-century Palestinian women writers
Category:Writers from Jerusalem
Category:Academic staff of Lebanese American University
Category:Palestinian expatriates in Egypt
Category:Palestinian expatriates in the United States
Category:Palestinian expatriates in the United Kingdom
Category:Palestinian expatriates in Lebanon
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