Samar Yazbek: the commitment of a contemporary Syrian author

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the biography and the works of the Syrian author and journalist Samar Yazbek (Lattakia, 1970). Her works belong to different literary genres and openly speak about various aspects of the Syrian society from an inside perspective and with a gender focus. The author explores in depth the beliefs and customs of the Syrian society, explicitly dealing with social and political taboos and criticizing the indissoluble power of the dictatorship, the invisible hand that prevents the progress of society. The writer describes the condition of women through an ongoing search for the meaning and the role of women in contemporary Syrian society. Her entire work is a clear example of women’s empowerment-focused literature. It is for this reason that we approach the study of her works on the one hand, from the gynocritics perspective, the feminist theory of literary criticism proposed by the American Elaine Showalter (1979) and on the other hand from the memory studies perspective. Throughout the analysis proposed, it is possible to prove the differences and the changes happened in Samar Yazbek’s writing style before and after the beginning of the Revolution in 2011.