Praise for the first edition:""""An impressive collection of more than 50 pieces-essays, poems, folktales, short stories, memoirs, film scripts, lectures/speeches-by Arab women challenging the widely accepted view of Middle Eastern women as submissive non-thinkers to whom feminism is a foreign concept."""" -Booklist""""Anyone interested in good writing should read [Opening the Gates]. Here are first-class stories with the energy and freshness we expect from a beginning."""" -Doris Lessing, The Independent""""This collection of stories, speeches, essays, poems and memoirs bears fierce testimony to a tradition of brave Arab feminist writing in the face of subjugation by a Muslim patriarchy.""""-Publishers Weekly""""This impressive collection of writings by Arab women . . . represent[s] a powerful series of vignettes by women who were both insightful and gifted, into the lives of women who have lived 'behind the veil' over the last 100 years.""""-Arab Book World""""An expression of indigenous, intrepid feminism in the Arab world.""""-Ms.""""Opening the Gates succeeds not because of its methodology, but because of the stories the women tell.""""-Voice Literary Supplement | Opening The Gates Second Edition by Margot Badran, Paperback | Indigo Chapters