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Radius:A Story of Feminist Revolution
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A haunting, intimate account of the women and men who built a feminist revolution in the middle of the Arab Spring
In 2012, the joyful hopes of the democratic Egyptian Revolution were tempered by revelations of mass sexual assault in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the revolution’s symbolic birthplace.
This is the story of the women and men who formed Opantish - Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment - who deployed hundreds of volunteers, scouts rescue teams, and getaway drivers to intervene in the spiraling cases of sexual violence against women protesters in the square. Organized and led by women during 2012–2013 - the final, chaotic months of Egypt’s revolution - teams of volunteers fought their way into circles of men to pull the woman at the center to safety. Often, they risked assault themselves.
Journalist Yasmin El-Rifae was one of Opantish’s organizers, and this is her evocative, aching account of their work, as they raced to develop new tactics, struggled with a revolution bleeding into counter-revolution, and dealt with the long aftermath of assault and devastation. Told in a daring, hybrid narrative style drawn from years of interviews and her own, intimate experience, it is a story of overlapping circles: the circles of male attackers activists had to break through, the ways sexual violence can be circled off as “irrelevant” to political struggle, and the endless repetitive loops of living with trauma.
Introducing a powerful new voice, a writer whose searchingly beautiful, spare prose cuts to the core of a story ever more urgent and relevant: of women’s resistance when all else has failed.
Reviews
A remarkable book which penetrates into the heart of feminist political activism without neglecting its roots in the complex lives of women or the harsh dynamics which can unfold in the midst of emancipatory struggle.
This book is one of the most powerful reports on rescue work done in a revolutionary war zone that I have ever read; and the fact that it is work done by women on behalf of other women who've been sexually harassed (to put it mildly) not by the enemy but by their fellow revolutionaries makes it all the more gripping. I wish Radius a long life, with dazzling reviews and an ever-increasing readership.
An intimate and revealing account of the post 2011 mosaic of contentious politics in Egypt. Rifae's narrative reveals important intersections between gender politics, collective organizing, and processes of becoming.
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I devoured this book in one sitting. A must read not just for its gripping and complex depiction of feminist resistance during the Egyptian revolution from an organizer who was on the ground, but for those of us who care about feminism and radical movement-building all over the world.
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Radius fearlessly dives into the violent, disastrous omnishambles that transpired in Cairo in 2013 ... an urgent and timely study of what it means to lead, partake in and witness a revolution in the Middle East
, Times Literary Supplement -
Readers won't soon forget El-Rifae's captivating book; essential reading for feminists and historians.
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Powerful testimony of the Egyptian Revolution destroying itself and the courageous people who hoped to save it.
Kirkus -
The writing is beautiful and clean, carrying readers through harrowing and heartbreaking moments....This account of a brave, generous, and largely unacknowledged enterprise is not only an essential record of modern Egyptian history; it's a testament to what women are capable of, to what can be achieved through passionate collective action.
, New York Review of Books -
A powerful book
, Egyptian Streets -
A tapestry of trauma, revolution, healing, catharsis, and pain, replicating the spectrum of emotions unleashed by present-day activism in the Middle East...Calling out the patriarchy in the Arab world without succumbing to imperialist and racist tropes projected onto the Middle East is a fine balancing act, one that El-Rifae accomplishes in Radius.
, Baffler -
A unique account of a feminist revolutionary moment from the inside. Yasmin El-Rafae somehow manages to convey in graphic detail the inspirational struggle to protect women from the sexual violence that erupted at the heart of the Arab Spring, while remaining true to the difficulties and pain that can arise within any such movement, the whole story framed by her own first steps into the no less complex reality of motherhood. Beautifully negotiating the terrain between public and private worlds for women, Radius is a feminist manifesto for our times.