May Ziadeh

May Ziadeh was the daughter of Elias Zakhur Ziadeh, a Lebanese Maronite from Chahtoul village and Nuzha Khalil Mu'mar, a Palestinian Christian whose family was originally from Hauran, Syria,{{Cite web |last=جدلية |first=Jadaliyya |translator-first=Mazen |translator-last=Hakeem |title=May Ziada: A Profile from the Archives |date=2014-06-08|url=https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/30793 |access-date=2024-01-29 |website=Jadaliyya - جدلية}}{{cite journal |title=مي زيادة في احتفالات "بيروت ١٩٩٩ م عاصمة ثقافية للعالم العربي" |trans-title=May Ziadeh at the “Beirut 1999 Cultural Capital of the Arab World” celebrations |journal=الفيصل [Al-Faisal Magazine] |publisher=المملكة العربية السعودية، دار الفيصل الثقافية، [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Al-Faisal Cultural House] |publication-place=al-Riyāḍ, SA |issue=279 |issn=0258-1140 |oclc=607786901 |language=ar |url={{GBurl |id=trFeDwAAQBAJ |pg=PT130}}}}{{Cite book |last=AYYILDIZ |first=Esat |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lfPYEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22of+Syro-lebanese+origin%22&pg=PA83 |title=Arab Women in Ink: Exploring Gender Perspectives in Modern Arabic Literature |date=2023-06-20 |publisher=Livre de Lyon |isbn=978-2-38236-574-8 |language=en}}{{sfn |Ashour |Ghazoul |Reda-Mekdashi |McClure |2008 |loc=[{{GBurl |id=fmpjEAAAQBAJ |pg=PT786}} page bottom]}} settled in the early 19th century{{Cite book |last=غازي |first=خالد محمد |title=مي زيادة سيرة حياتها وأدبها وأوراق لم تنشر |publisher=دار الكتب المصرية |publication-date=2015 |pages=11 |trans-title=May Ziadeh, Her Life, Her Works, and documents not used published}}{{page needed |date=January 2024}} She was born in Nazareth, Ottoman Palestine.{{cite journal |last=Bushrui |first=Suheil Badi |author-link=Suheil Bushrui |title=May Ziadeh |journal=Al-Kulliyah |date=Winter 1972 |pages=16–19 |issn= 0454-5788 |oclc=502559963 |url=https://www.kahlilgibran.com/archives/written-works/522-suheil-badi-bushrui-may-ziadeh-al-kulliyah-winter-1972-pp-16-19/file.html |via=kahlilgibran.com}} Her father had been a teacher and the editor of Al Mahrūsah.

May Elias Ziadeh attended primary school in Nazareth. As her father came to the Keserwan region of Mount Lebanon, she was sent at the age of 14 to Aintoura to pursue her secondary studies at a French convent school for girls. Her studies in Aintoura exposed her to French and Romantic literature, to which she took a particular liking.{{cite web |title=Notice sur la poétesse May Ziade |trans-title=Note on the poet May Ziade |language=fr |website=BIBLIB |date=2001-03-21 |url=http://biblib.com/Textes/Auteurs/Documents/Ziade_M_1.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070206134930/http://biblib.com/Textes/Auteurs/Documents/Ziade_M_1.htm |archive-date=2007-02-06 |url-status=dead}} She attended several Roman Catholic schools in Lebanon before returning to Nazareth in the year 1904 to be with her parents. She is reported to have published her first articles at the age of 16. In 1908, she and her family immigrated to Egypt.

Ziadeh never married, but from 1912 onward, she maintained an extensive written correspondence with one of the literary giants of the twentieth century, the Lebanese-American poet and writer Khalil Gibran. Although the pair never met, the correspondence lasted 19 years until his death in 1931.{{sfn |Gibran |1983}}

File:May Ziade's Father, Elias Ziade.jpg

Between 1928 and 1932, Ziadeh suffered a series of personal losses, beginning with the death of her parents, a number of her friends, and above all Khalil Gibran. She fell into a deep depression and returned to Lebanon where her relatives placed her in a psychiatric hospital to gain control over her estate. Nawal El Saadawi alleges that Ziadeh was sent to the hospital for expressing feminist sentiments.{{sfn|Peterson |Lewis|2001 |p=[https://archive.org/details/elgarcompanionto0000unse_g5d1/page/220/mode/2up 220]}} Ziadeh was profoundly humiliated and incensed by this decision; she eventually recovered and left after a medical report proved that she was of sound mental health. She returned to Cairo where she died on October 17, 1941.{{sfn |Khaldi |2008 |p=103}}

Ziadeh's father founded Al Mahroussah newspaper while the family was in Egypt. She contributed to a number of articles. She also published articles in Al Hilal, Al Ahram and Al Muqtataf.{{cite journal|author=Hala Kamal|title=Women's Writing on Women's Writing": Mayy Ziyada's Literary Biographies as Egyptian Feminist History|journal=Women's Writing |date=2018|volume=25|issue=2|page=269|doi=10.1080/09699082.2017.1387350|s2cid=158818848|url=https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2017.1387350|url-access=subscription}}

Ziadeh was particularly interested in learning languages. She studied privately at home alongside her French-Catholic education, and later at a local university for a Modern Languages degree while in Egypt. She graduated in 1917. As a result, Ziadeh was completely bilingual in Arabic and French, and had working knowledge of English, Italian, German, Syriac (as an integral part of her ethnoreligious Lebanese Maronite identity), Spanish, Latin, as well as Modern Greek.

Ziadeh was well known in Middle Eastern literary circles, receiving many male and female writers and intellectuals at a literary salon she established in 1912 (and which Egyptian poet Gamila El Alaily attempted to emulate after Ziadeh's death). Among those that frequented the salon were Taha Hussein, Khalil Moutrane, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, {{ill|Anton Gemayel|ar|أنطون الجميل|arz|انطون الجميل|fa|آنتون جمیل}}, Walieddine Yakan, Abbas el-Akkad and Yaqub Sarruf. Ziadeh is credited with introducing the work of Khalil Gibran to the Egyptian public.{{sfn |Gibran |2006 |p=22}}

Unlike her peers Princess Nazli Fazil and Huda Sha'arawi, May Ziadeh was more a 'woman of letters' than a social reformer. However, she was also involved in the women's emancipation movement.{{sfn |Zaydān |1995 |p=[https://archive.org/details/arabwomennovelis0000zayd/page/76/mode/2up 75]}} Ziadeh was deeply concerned with the emancipation of the Middle Eastern woman; a task to be effected first by tackling ignorance, and then anachronistic traditions. She considered women to be the basic elements of every human society and wrote that a woman enslaved could not breastfeed her children with her own milk when that milk smelled strongly of servitude.

She specified that female evolution towards equality need not be enacted at the expense of femininity, but rather that it was a parallel process. In 1921, she convened a conference under the heading, "Le but de la vie" ("The goal of life"), where she called upon Middle Eastern women to aspire toward freedom, and to be open to the Occident without forgetting their Oriental identity.{{sfn|Boustani |2003|p=203}} Despite her death in 1941 her writings still represent the ideals of the first wave of Lebanese feminism. Ziadeh believed in liberating women and the first wave focused on doing just that through education, receiving voting rights, and finally having representation in government.{{cite web |last=Stephan |first=Rita |title=Four Waves of Lebanese Feminism |website=E-International Relations |date=2014-11-07 |url=https://www.e-ir.info/2014/11/07/four-waves-of-lebanese-feminism/ |access-date=2024-01-29}}

Bearing a romantic streak from childhood, Ziadeh was successively influenced by Lamartine, Byron, Shelley, and finally Gibran. These influences are evident in the majority of her works. She often reflected on her nostalgia for Lebanon and her fertile, vibrant, sensitive imagination is as evident as her mystery, melancholy and despair.

Ziadeh's first published work, Fleurs de rêve (1911), was a volume of poetry, written in French, using the pen name of Isis Copia. She wrote quite extensively in French, and occasionally English or Italian, but as she matured she increasingly found her literary voice in Arabic. She published works of criticism and biography, volumes of free-verse poetry and essays, and novels. She translated several European authors into Arabic, including Arthur Conan Doyle from English, Brada (the Italian Contessa Henriette Consuelo di Puliga) from French, and Max Müller from German. She hosted the most famous literary salon during the twenties and thirties in Cairo.{{sfn |Ziegler |1999 |p=103}}

Well noted titles of her works in Arabic (with English translation in brackets) include:

- Bâhithat el-Bâdiya باحثة البادية ("Seeker in the Desert", pen name of Malak Hifni Nasif)

- Sawâneh fatât سوانح فتاة (Platters of Crumbs)

- Zulumât wa Ichâ'ât ظلمات وإشاعات (Humiliation and Rumors...)

- Kalimât wa Ichârât كلمات وإشارات (Words and Signs)

- Al Saha'ef الصحائف (The Newspapers)

- Ghayat Al-Hayât غاية الحياة (The Meaning of Life)

- Al-Musâwât المساواة (Equality)

- Bayna l-Jazri wa l-Madd بين الجزر والمد (Between the Ebb and Flow)

Ziadeh is considered by many as integral to the feminist movement having published many autobiographies of women between 1919-1925, this was part of her advocacy for the empowerment of women, examples of women featured in her work include Egyptian feminist Malak Hifni Nassef in her book Bahithat-ul-Badia.{{Citation |last=Haddad |first=Bayan |title=Ziadeh, May (1886–1941) |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781135000356-rem1640-1 |encyclopedia=Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism |year=2016 |place=London |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9781135000356-rem1640-1 |isbn=9781135000356 |access-date=2022-12-22|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal |last=Ghorayeb |first=Rose |author-link=Rose Ghorayeb |date=1979 |title=May Ziadeh (1886-1941) |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/493725 |journal=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=375–382 |doi=10.1086/493725 |s2cid=145644529 |issn=0097-9740|url-access=subscription }} She was credited as being the first woman to use the term "women's cause" in the Middle East according to critic Hossam Aql, "She was the first professional writer to take a critical approach to women's stories or novels".{{cite web |title=May Ziade: The Life of an Arab Feminist Writer |website=Al Jazeera |date=2018-03-21 |url=https://www.aljazeera.com/program/al-jazeera-world/2018/3/21/may-ziade-the-life-of-an-arab-feminist-writer |access-date=2024-01-29}} Click Read more for article and second video. Her fiction often included strong female characters and discussed the condition of Middle Eastern women, for example in one of her short stories, she illustrates the evil of frequent divorce and remarriage which she blames on men and patriarchal society.

In 1999, May Ziadeh was named by the Lebanese Minister of Culture as the personage of the year around which the annual celebration of "Beirut, cultural capital of the Arab world" would be held.

A Google Doodle on 11 February 2012 commemorated Ziadeh's 126th birth anniversary.{{cite web |title=May Ziade's 126th Birthday Doodle |website=Google Doodles |date=2012-02-11 |url=https://doodles.google/doodle/may-ziades-126th-birthday/ | access-date=2024-01-29}}

• "Goodbye Lebanon", trans. Rose DeMaris In Virginia's Sisters: An Anthology of Women's Writings, London: Aurora Metro Books, 2023. ISBN 9781912430789

• Women's literary salons and societies in the Arab world

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• {{cite book |last1=Ashour |first1=Radwa |author-link=Radwa Ashour |last2=Ghazoul |first2=Ferial J. |author2-link=Ferial J. Ghazoul |last3=Reda-Mekdashi |first3=Hasna |last4=McClure |first4=Mandy |title=Arab Women Writers A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999 |publisher=The American University in Cairo Press |publication-place=Cairo; New York |year=2008 |isbn=978-977-416-146-9 |oclc=10018815770 |jstor=j.ctt15m7j94}}
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• {{cite book |last=Gibran |first=Kahlil |translator-last=Bushrui |translator-first=Suheil B. |translator-link=Suheil Bushrui |translator2-last=Kuzbarī |translator2-first=Salmá al-Ḥaffār |translator2-link=Salma Kuzbari |title=Blue Flame: The Love Letters of Kahlil Gibran to May Ziadah |publisher=Longman |publication-place=New York |year=1983 |isbn=978-0-582-78078-1 |oclc=713801519}}
• {{cite thesis |last=Khaldi |first=Boutheina |year=2008 |title=Arab Women Going Public: Mayy Ziyadah and her Literary Salon in a Comparative Context |publisher=Indiana University |publication-place=Bloomington, IN, US |isbn=978-0-549-84746-5 |oclc=320954792}}
• {{cite book |last=Ouyang |first=Wen-chin |author-link=Wen-chin Ouyang |chapter=Mapping Arab Womanhood: Subject, Subjectivity and Identity Politics in the Biographies of Malak Hifni Nasif |editor-last=Ostle |editor-first=Robin |title=Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean: self-expression in a Muslim culture from post-classical times to the present day |publisher=I.B. Tauris; European Science Foundation; In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan |publication-place=London, New York, Strasbourg, France |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-84511-650-7 |oclc=156831780}}
• {{Cite book |first1=Janice |last1=Peterson |first2=Margaret |last2=Lewis |title=The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics |publisher=Edward Elgar Publishing |location=Northampton |year=2001 |orig-year=1999 |isbn=978-1-84064-783-9 |oclc=827907131}}
• {{cite book |last=Zaydān |first=Jūzīf |title=Arabic Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond |publisher=State University of New York Press |publication-place=Albany |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-585-04558-0 |oclc=42854941 |pages=53–57, 59–62, 74–77 |url=https://archive.org/details/arabwomennovelis0000zayd |url-access=registration |via=Inernet Archive}}
• {{cite journal |last=Ziegler |first=Antje |title=Al-Haraka Baraka! The Late Rediscovery of Mayy Ziyāda's Works |journal=Die Welt des Islams |volume=39 |issue=1 |date=1999 |issn=0043-2539 |doi=10.1163/1570060991648905 |pages=103–115 |oclc=5672404871}}

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• {{cite journal |last=Booth |first=Marilyn |author-link=Marilyn Booth |title=Biography and Feminist Rhetoric in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt: Mayy Ziyada's Studies of Three Women's Lives |journal=Journal of Women's History |volume=3 |issue=1 |date=1991 |issn=1527-2036 |doi=10.1353/jowh.2010.0118 |pages=38–64 |s2cid=143719304 |oclc=}}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Buck |editor-first=Claire |title=The Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature |publisher=Prentice Hall General Reference |publication-place=New York |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-13-689621-0 |oclc=25628283}}
• {{cite book |last=Khoury |first=Raif Georges |title=Mayy Ziyāda (1886-1941), entre la tradition et la modernité, ou, Le renouvellement des perspectives culturelles et sociales dans son œuvre, à l'image de l'Europe |trans-title=Mayy Ziyāda (1886-1941), between tradition and modernity, or, The renewal of cultural and social perspectives in his work, like Europe |publisher=Deux Mondes |publication-place=Edingen-Neckarhause |year=2003 |isbn=978-3-932662-06-5 |oclc=52554410 |language=fr}}
• {{cite book |last1=Khumayrī |first1=al-Ṭāhir |last2=Kampffmeyer |first2=Georg |title=Leaders in Contemporary Arabic Literature: A Book of Reference |publisher=Harrassowitz |publication-place=Leipzig |year=1930 |oclc=21107015 |pages=24–27}}

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{{Wikiquote}}

• {{YouTube |id=Z4oAf7HivKg |title=May Ziade: The Life of an Arab Feminist Writer {{!}} Al Jazeera World}}
• {{cite web |last=Sonal |first=Emine |title=May Ziadeh |series=Suggested Curriculum Developments to Communicate Women's Rights Through Literature: Poetry by Women in U.S.A., Turkey and Egypt. |url=http://onefineart.com/en/artists/mayziedeh/index-e.shtml |website=One Fine Art |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051210043425/http://onefineart.com/en/artists/mayziedeh/index-e.shtml |archive-date=2005-12-10 |url-status=dead}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ziade, May}}

Category:1886 births

Category:1941 deaths

Category:20th-century Lebanese poets

Category:20th-century novelists

Category:20th-century translators

Category:Arabic-language poets

Category:Arabic-language women poets

Category:Arabic-language writers from the Ottoman Empire

Category:German–Arabic translators

Category:Lebanese Maronites

Category:Lebanese feminists

Category:Lebanese novelists

Category:Lebanese people of Palestinian descent

Category:Lebanese salon-holders

Category:Lebanese women writers

Category:Palestinian Eastern Catholics

Category:Palestinian literature

Category:20th-century Palestinian women writers

Category:People from Nazareth

Category:Salon-holders from the Ottoman Empire

Category:Translators from English

Category:Translators from French

Category:Translators to Arabic

Category:Palestinian women poets

Category:Palestinian women essayists