Background
Daisy al-Amir was born in Basra, Iraq in 1935. Her father refused to pay tuition, however, and on her trip home, she stopped in Beirut where she found a job as a secretary in the Iraqi embassy.
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Daisy Al-Amir
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She chose to remain in Beirut.
Career
She is author of has renowned her as one of the leading female writers of Iraq. She was eventually promoted to the job of Assistant Press Attaché. In 1975, when the civil war broke out in Lebanon, she was appointed director of the Iraqi Cultural Center.
She returned to Iraq in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Her stories reflect women’s experiences during turbulent times in the Middle East including during the Lebanese civil war, and during the rise to power of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Daisy al-Amir is the author of five published works including: Al Balad al-Baid Alladhi Tuhibbuhu (), 1964, Thumma Tauda al-Mawja (), 1969, Fi Dawwamat al-Hubb wa al-Karahiya (), 1979 and Wu'ud li-l-bay' (, 1981) about the Lebanese civil war, and Ala la’ihat al-intizar, (The Waiting List: An Iraqi Woman’s Tales of Alienation), 1994.
Here the alienation is that of a cultural refugee, a divorced woman who is educated, affluent, and alone. Al-Amir's prose is influenced by a long tradition of Iraqi poetry.
