What are the origins, function, and reasons for the harem? Are good Muslim women totally restricted to "women's space?" Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist and Qur'anic scholar, talks about restrictions placed on women in both the Muslim AND Western cultures. She builds her arguments around her grandmother's stories, especially those of Scheherazade, and ends with a thought-provoking question about the means used in the West to limit women's access to the public world. (Related and supplementary readings for all topics are at the end
The life of a woman married before she was a teenager to a man her parents had chosen. He is a tenant farmer a day's journey away. Life is a constant struggle, and the changing times merely add to their problems. Reading this reminded me of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. One of the discussion questions for this book will be whether this type of life still exists, and where.
Motherhood in mid-twentieth century Nigeria, before the country won its independence from Great Britain, was the primary role of a woman, and it was from motherhood that she was supposed to gain the greatest joy. Nnu Ego is cast aside by her first husband because she has not produced a child. She finally has children in her second marriage, but her husband soon takes a second wife and Nnu must adapt to that.
Dreams of Trespass - Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi. ISBN 0201489376
Honor Lost - Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan by Norma Khouri. ISBN 0743448782. Ritual "honor" murder in a middle class family in 1990s Jordan.
Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. ISBN 0385014856. (The author's life in a small Iraqi village in the late 1950s.)
Women of Deh Koh - Lives in an Iranian Village by Erika Friedl. ISBN 0140149937. (Takes place in post-Shah Iran.)
Women and Gender in Islam - Historical Roots of a Modern Debate by Leila Ahmed. ISBN 0300055838.
The Veil and the Male Elite - A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam by Fatima Mernissi. ISBN 0201632217.
Women in Saudi Arabia - Ideology and Behavior Among the Elite by Soraya Altorki. ISBN 0231061838.
Accomodating Protest - Working Women, the New Veiling, and Change in Cairo by Arlene Elowe Macleod. ISBN 0231072805.
Women in the Middle East and North Africa by Guity Nashat and Judith E. Tucker. ISBN -252212642. (Part of the Restoring Women to History series.)
Islam and Democracy - Fear of the Modern World by Fatima Mernissi. ISBN 0201624834. As the blurb on the back says:"Essential reading for anyone interested in an understanding of the Muslim heart and mind."
Women in Asia by Barbara N. Ramusack and Sharon Sievers. ISBN 0253212677. (Part of the Restoring Women to History Series.)
Peasant women:
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. ISBN0671510126. Both this book and Nectar in a Sieve take place during the 20th century.
Women in Sub-Saharan Africa by Iris Berger and E. Frances Wwhite. ISBN 0253213096. (Part of theRestoring Women to History series.)
So Long a Letter by Mariana Ba. ISBN 0435905554. A fictional reminiscence of feelings of a Senegalese woman when her husband took a second wife.
We Only Come Here to Struggle - Stories from Berida's Life by Berida Ndambuki and Claire C. Robertson. ISBN 0253213665. A Kenyan market woman talks about her life through the changes in Kenya and the problems of supporting her sixteen children with minimal help from her husband.
(I'll keep adding books as I come across relevant material.)