Background
Latifa al-Zayyat was born in Damietta, Egypt, on August 8, 1923.
شارع الجامعة، Al Orman، Giza Governorate 12613, Egypt
Cairo University where Latifa al-Zayyat received her Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees.
The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature that Latifa al-Zayyat received for The Open Door novel in 1996.
(February 1946: Cairo is engulfed by demonstrations agains...)
February 1946: Cairo is engulfed by demonstrations against the British. Layla's older brother Mahmud returns, wounded in the clashes, and the events of that fateful day mark a turning point in her life, an awakening to the world around her.
https://www.amazon.com/Open-Door-Novel-Latifa-al-Zayyat/dp/9774168275/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Latifa+al-Zayyat&qid=1581499090&s=books&sr=1-1
1960
critic educator translator writer
Latifa al-Zayyat was born in Damietta, Egypt, on August 8, 1923.
Latifa al-Zayyat was born and raised in a middle-class family. At the age of eleven, she witnessed an anti-British demonstration with fourteen people killed by the police. It had a great impact on her further views and convictions.
Al-Zayyat studied at Cairo University from 1942 to 1946 when she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. Later, she obtained a Master of Arts degree from the University which was followed by a Ph.D. in 1957.
As a college student, al-Zayyat helped found the Higher Committee for Students and Workers, which led a 1946 revolt against the monarchy and British occupation. She was imprisoned in the al-Hadra prison in Alexandria and released in 1949 with a suspended sentence.
The start of Latifa al-Zayyat's career can be counted from her service at the Women's College of Ain Shams University where she began to teach English after graduating from Cairo University. In this role, she came to have considerable influence on young Egyptian writers and critics. From 1976 to 1983, she headed the University's department of English.
In 1945, al-Zayyat, along with Inji Efflatoun, founded the Rabitat Fatayat al jami'at wa al ma' ahid (The League of University and Institutes' Young Women).
While being married to her first husband, Latifa al-Zayyat paused both her writing and political activity. She came back to both after the divorce in the middle of the 1960s. From 1965 to 1968, she led the column on women's issues in Hawa (Eve) magazine. The events of the 1967 Arab defeat against Israel pushed Latifa al-Zayyat to stop her writing again for a while.
The pause ended up at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1970, al-Zayyat came back to the public work first as head of the Dramatic Criticism Section in the Higher Institute of Artistic Criticism serving in that capacity until 1972 when she occupied the director's post at the Academy of Arts. She served in that capacity for one year. During this period, al-Zayyat was a representative of her native country at United Nations women's conferences, and with such organizations as the Union of Arab writers and the Palestine National Council as well.
Later political activism of the writer included protesting the institution of formal diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel and founding the Committee for the Defence of National Culture. This led to her second arrest when she was among some fifteen hundred intellectuals imprisoned by Anwar al-Sadat in 1981.
While in prison, al-Zayyat worked on her autobiography titled The Search as well as on the collection of short fiction, Old Age and Other Stories, issued in 1986. These stories are focused on the thoughts of women as they reflect on self-fulfillment and freedom and on their inability to reach these states. A few years after publication, al-Zayyat published The Raid, which was translated into English.
Latifa al-Zayyat showed herself as a literary critic as well. There are nine critical volumes on Anglo-American literature to her credit, including the books on Hemingway, Hume, Ford Madox Ford, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence.
(February 1946: Cairo is engulfed by demonstrations agains...)
1960Latifa al-Zayyat sought to express her political convictions through her writings and way of life.
Devoted to nationalist, leftist, and feminist causes, she helped form political opposition groups and was twice jailed for related activities. Her works, including The Open Door, show the conflict created by al-Zayyat's nationalist interests and her personal struggles in a male dominated society that led her to the decision that Egyptian politics should take precedence over gender issues.
Al-Zayyat was married twice, but later expressed regret that personal and sexual interests had, at least for a time, drawn her away from political work. She felt that a single vision should guide her entire life, encompassing the personal and political. She also wrote many essays on women and critiques as well as reviews of novels and political happenings.
Al-Zayyat believed in the tight fit of the public and private spheres of life.
Quotations:
"I was rendered an active responsible human being, open to my country and my people, and preoccupied with their concerns."
"One can only find one's self by initially losing it into a much wider issue than one's own subjectivity, into a reality bigger than one's own."
"After the 1967 defeat, I hated words and, consequently, literature. I confined my readings to history and economics, and I wrote that a single bullet against the enemy was more significant than all the words in the world..."
"I don't have any regrets. Perhaps it would have been possible for me to be a better writer, or a better fighter, or a better professor if I had confined myself to one role. But my languages are multiple. And it is through my use of these many languages that I have enriched myself and others."
Latifa al-Zayyat was a member of the World Peace Council, and the Union of Palestinian Writers.
Latifa al-Zayyat was a strict but fair-minded teacher. According to Itidal Uthman, she didn't teach "from the position of paternalism, but from the position of equality."
Quotes from others about the person
"Her involvement with young people was lifelong. Her time, advice, support – and at times her praise – were given generously and without stint." Ahdaf Soueif, novelist
"[al-Zayyat] does not separate general oppression from one's oppression of the self or from others' oppression of the defeatist self." Dr. Ameena Rasheed
Latifa al-Zayyat was married twice. Her first husband was Dr. Rashad Rushdi, a right-wing critic. They divorced in 1965.