ABSTRACT
Publishing in English translation has been one way by which some Iraqi women writers have worked to preserve stories of Iraq alongside their aesthetics of writing for decades. These stories call for ongoing reflection – and also possible rethinking – on the way para/translated texts are engaged with in ways which recognise the many political complexities many Iraqi women writers and para/translators faced, and at the same time appreciate different aesthetics of their writing and re/writing. Iraqi women writers’ commitment to render Iraq and Iraqis in counter-hegemonic ways have called for varying pathways of translation, some of which ‘co-create’ (while being co-created) by constantly evolving receptions and environments. Iraqi women’s stories often carry such a great emotional impact for many readers in Arabic or English translation. The co-emergence of this impact shows why we need to continue to question which – or whose – voices we think we are reading in translation. This book has shown that pathways of Iraqi woman stories and their para/translations are always creatively open to question.
