When Mona Eltahawy was 15 years old, her Egyptian family moved to Saudi Arabia after living in London for eight years. Nothing could have prepared her for the dramatic and damaging sexist mistreatment, culture shock and physical assaults she encountered there. Compared to the rest of the world, Eltahawy charges, Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa have the worst records when it comes to women's rights.
In part, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution is based on Eltahawy's personal experiences during her adolescence, but while these affect its shape, they do not encompass the whole. Eltahawy includes the voices of other Middle Eastern women. She presents stories, statistics and histories that focus on women who live in cultures hostile to them. She argues that these societies have misappropriated women's faith in ways to control and oppress them. Her book denounces numerous practices, including veiling women, absence of voting and employment rights, sexual violence, victim blaming, female genital mutilation and the rape of women and children.
But women in these countries are speaking out and fighting back. They have become activists and are the vanguard of a much longer revolution, one that is coming from within their own borders.
This book does not seek to appease any audience. Nor is it a gentle and sensitive exploration of the atrocities that happen to women in the Middle East. Eltahawy refuses to blunt her anger or soften the truth, which makes Headscarves and Hymens a challenging, yet vitally important book. --Justus Joseph, bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company