"Salt Journals offers a powerful message of Tunisian women’s resilience in the face of political terrorism and unspeakable cruelty sanctioned by the regimes of Bourguiba and Ben Ali."—Lora Lunt, translator of The Childhood of a Muslim Girl Growing up in Pre-Independent Tunisia (Les Jardins Du Nord)
"A treasure trove bringing the lives and struggles of Tunisian women political prisoners to a wider global attention."—Hamid Dabashi, author of The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism
"This book is a jewel. Zangana has coached a group of women former political prisoners out of years of silence to reveal their lived reality in Tunisia’s prisons. Additionally, luminous glimpses of their intimate feelings of family, love, resilience and resistance are the originality and gift of the book."—Victoria Britton, author of Love and Resistance in the Films of Mai Masri
"These gems of short stories and intimate journals are united by geography, gender, and theme."—Ferial Ghazoul, American University in Cairo
"Salt Journals, like other narratives within prison literature, engages with transgression, power and violence. Because the stories are narrated from women’s perspective, they seek to break social taboos."—Middle East Eye
Description
Salt Journals is a compelling collection of essays by Tunisian women, sharing their personal experiences with dictatorship and oppression. While rooted in the history and culture of Tunisia, these narratives reflect universal feelings of isolation, pain, and the indomitable quest for freedom.
Drawn from a variety of different professions, including a lawyer, an engineer, a nurse, a student, and a city council member, among others, these women are contesting the culture of silence surrounding women’s prison narratives. Employing words as their weapons of nonviolent resistance, the authors recount the harsh realities of a militarized state and its oppressive prison system. Their creative defiance against state repression emerges not just as a means of survival, but as a profound act of dissidence, reclaiming control from the brutality imposed upon their lives.
A testament to the power of self-representation, Salt Journals opens a vital space for dialogue on the necessity of empathy, resilience, and the importance of speaking out in the face of tyranny.
About the Author
Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi author and political activist who has written short stories, novels, and nonfiction. Some of her more recent works include Packaged Lives: Ten Stories and a Novella and Dreaming of Baghdad.
Christalla Yakinthou is a lecturer in the political science department at the University of Birmingham.
Virginie Ladisch is a senior expert at the International Center for Transitional Justice.
December 2024