March 3, 2002 Welcome to a generous selection of articles from DAWN's Weekly Books & Authors. This page is updated every Sunday. For current issue Click here Women at the crossroads: Another world is possible THE sun was shining. Its hot rays reminded me of Egypt in early summer. But I was here in Porto Alegre on February 1, 2002, in the south of Brazil, and for me this was normally mid-winter. I was sitting on a high platform and in front of me, in the huge auditorium stretched... Women at the crossroads: Losing the political edge THE moot question today is what is the women’s movement in Pakistan? The tendency is to see it as either the Women’s Action Forum in itself, or as WAF and a few other ‘known’ women’s rights groups. This is unfair even on these organizations... Women at the crossroads: True to its origins INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day (March 8) brings back many memories for me. If I remember rightly, we started to ‘celebrate’ this day only in the mid-seventies. At the time, women’s groups from different political persuasions... Women at the crossroads: Time for reassessment THE women’s movement in Pakistan has come of age! It all began with discriminatory laws promulgated by Ziaul Haq in 1979. The so-called Islamization process was directed towards making women and minorities second-class citizens.... ARTICLES & EXCERPTS : Lucky Mariam EVEN in our wildest dreams we did not think Mariam would be so lucky.” Mother had repeated this sentence over and over again. Her entire family had gathered for Mariam’s wedding and she was beside herself with joy.... AUTHOR: A voice to reckon with THROUGHOUT her career as a poet and writer, Fahmida Riaz (born 1946) has celebrated life, woman and the life-sustaining feminine values through her poetic expression. While the poems she wrote as a young girl in the 1960s spoke... AUTHOR: Raging to be free BOLD, defiant — or simply raging to be free (the title of her first book which is an English translation of her collection of Sindhi poetry) — call her what you... ARTICLES: Speaking out their lives STORYTELLING, traditionally the province of women in the east, has been a form of discourse well integrated into their lives. Considered a safe and domestic craft, it entertained children and entangled... ARTICLES: Writing women ON my bookshelf, there sits a book called A short history of English literature by Ifor Evans, published in 1940, reprinted year after year for three decades. Thumbing through it today... ARTICLES: Feminist discourse on the Web WOMEN constitute one of the largest, if not the largest, disadvantaged group in any society. In fact, how a society treats its female citizens has come to be regarded as one... ARTICLES: Puck’s love potion ON a recent Royal Shakespeare Company’s stage Puck actually pulled the stopper out of a blue vial and released a scientist’s recreation of the scent that has a role in Shakespeare’s... REVIEW: Belying the self-image WILLIAM Blum gave up a career in the US State Department in 1967 as a mark of protest over US actions in Vietnam. Since then, he has been a freelance journalist... REVIEW: Bleaker side of life KHUDA ki basti is not just a novel. It is an icon of the nether world of Pakistan — the world of desperately poor boys, lepers, swindlers, eunuchs, crooks and so... ARTICLES: Empowering women THE main question we need to ask ourselves today is whether the women in Pakistan are moving in the right direction. Needless to say there is still a lot left to... REVIEW: The unforgettable queen SHE caught the showbiz bug at the tender age of seven, grew up in Lahore, Calcutta (Kolkata) and Bombay (Mumbai), acted and sang with musical giants and ruled over the film... REVIEW: Reaffirming Islam SAAD S. Khan’s Reasserting international Islam is a valuable publication which gives the details of the structure and functioning of the Organization of Islamic Conference and other Islamic bodies and organizations,...

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