Abstract
Starting with the emotional impact the discovery of the practice of female genital mutilation has had on her life, Evelyne Accad gives us some information on the studies that have researched and analyzed the various practices. She describes and defines some of the terms used, takes us on her journey to some of the countries she visited in the last ten years interviewing women about their lives, specifically the practice of excision. She gives voices to some of these women through excerpts from some of her interviews. She raises the debates, discourses, and conflicts surrounding the practice, ending with her assessment of the situation and her own feminist commitment and vision for a better world and hopes for an end of the practice.
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Evelyne Accad was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. She has been a professor at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana since 1974 in French, comparative literature, African studies, women studies, Southwest Asian studies, and the Honors Program. Publications include:Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East; New York: New York University Press, 1990; andContemporary Arab Women Writers and Poets. Beirut: Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World, 1986.
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Accad, E. Excision: Practices, discourses and feminist commitment. Feminist Issues 13, 47–68 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685734
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02685734