This issue sparks a discussion on identity and literature. We search for the possibility of the existence of a feminist, emancipatory, queer literature capable of shattering the patriarchal and heteronormative hegemony over our Arabic literature. We wonder what this literature looks like and how to determine its criteria and draw representation politics into it.           For this reason, we scrutinize literary works in which we can make out glimpses of familiar faces and bodies, and reflections of lives, desires and narratives that are often marginalized, erased, and denied to us. We are looking for roots, for history. Or we create them with fresh new writings.

Nourishing the Roots  PDF 

  An Introduction by Ikhtiyar

Searching for Queer Desire: A Letter to Alifa Rifaat – Hend & Nadine.

Torrid Love or Classist Violence? : Complicity with Narratives of Discrimination in The Smell of Cinnamon – Roula Seghaier

 When a Lonely Heart is Just a Queer One – Nour Kamel

 Within us and against us : A reflective interpretation of the twenty-one love poems of Adrienne Rich – Mai Abd-Elhafez 

 The proof of love – Samah Gaafar 

We, the Interstices –  Farah Aridi

My Comrade, My Lover – Hashem

 Shackles  – Hashem 

Untitled poems – Fanny/Nour Blikaz

WHOM DO YOU WRITE FOR? A COLLAGE – Sinister wisdom