This post is crossposted at the writer’s blog.  Snow in Amman: An Anthology of Short Stories is a collection of eleven contemporary short stories from Jordan translated and edited by Ibtihal Mahmoud and Alexander Hadded, with a foreword by Samir Al Sharif which provides a very brief overview of the Jordanian short story for the reader unfamiliar with the […]

Women’s participation in the Jordanian political scene has always been a controversial one. Several women in Jordanian political history have made news because of their strong political opposition to their male counterparts’ dominance. The most famous one was Toujan Al-Faisal, who was Jordan’s first female member of parliament. In 2002, Al-Faisal made it to the […]

Last week, PBS aired the premiere of Solar Mamas, an inspiring documentary of one woman’s journey to transform her life after being offered the opportunity to become a solar-energy engineer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGMgHZ1WzxA Rafea Ehnad is a 32-year-old mother, and a second wife to an unemployed husband; she lives in one of Jordan’s poorest desert villages. With […]

Becca Swanson, bodybuilder, power-lifter, and pro-wrestler (who has been called “The Strongest Woman on the Planet”) writes on her site that she has “a burning desire to show the world my powerful physique laced with beauty and femininity.” This self-consciously anti-oxymoronic statement reflects the fact that female bodybuilders have often been subject to the most […]