Gamila Sabri's Notebooks

Gamila Sabri (1887-1962), a pioneer of the national women's movement in Egypt, wrote her Notebooks well past the age of sixty at the request of many of her close acquaintances. The original seven notebooks incorporate significant historical documents. Despite a tendency to be repetitive, they contain a semi-detailed description, almost in a storytelling mode, of life in an Egyptian household at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. Sabri’s work also emphasises the national and social fervour running rampant through Egyptian society, the diverse and often contradictory actions which this fervour incited, as well as the various forms of resistance that occurred at the time. The Notebooks suggest significant revisions of some established facts pertaining to the history of the Egyptian women's movement. After meticulous editing to avoid repetition, and for the first time, the Women and Memory Forum has collected all seven notebooks in one publication under the title Gamila Sabri's Notebooks.