Despite her move to Beirut, Nasrallah remained fully aware of the village members she left behind, especially the women. Although she asserts that she is not, in fact, a feminist writer, Nasrallah was “studying, working, and writing for [the women of her village], too, demanding a liberty that would teach them responsibility” (Cooke, “War’s” 7). Her experience as a student in Beirut was twofold: on one hand, she achieved success, especially as a woman outside of the village setting, and yet she also felt the loneliness one feels having ventured far away from home. Writing would become her escape from this very loneliness. Thus, her village upbringing in Kfeir, her move to Beirut as a woman, and the characteristics she believed to be representative of a strong Lebanese identity, all became recurring themes in Nasrallah’s writing because, above all, she had lived them.



After she wrote her first novel, Touyour Ayoul (September Birds), and after leaving her position as a journalist at a magazine, she published her first collection of short stories, Jazirat al-Wahm (Island of Illusion) in 1973. Emigration is a strong theme within the collection, in which she notes both “the dream of the emigrant for a triumphant return [and] the dream of the village for the emigrant’s success” (Cooke, “War’s” 145). In Jazirat al-Wahm, Nasrallah demonstrates that there are certain benefits bestowed upon the emigrant who chooses to return to their home country. She describes a young man, who found that without leaving, he could not become anything; thus, he emigrated. Upon his return, he had draped camera and binoculars carelessly around his neck. The villagers thronged to welcome the erstwhile nobody, and a bride was swiftly found—a painted doll who “like him is looking around for a new identity.” (qtd. in Cooke, “War’s” 190) The young emigrant, when he returns to his childhood home, is treated like a celebrity, and is given significant power and reverence. In addition to addressing the idealistic side of emigration, Nasrallah simultaneously depicts the alienation and loneliness an emigrant may feel in a foreign country.



Jazirat al-Wahm also demonstrates another important theme in Nasrallah’s writing: a dislike for traditional attitudes towards women. As a result, she sought to express the Lebanese woman’s enormously undiscovered potential. Bu Nasif, a central character of this collection, marries and hopes for a son. Instead, he ends up having two daughters. Upon his second daughter’s birth, Nasif throws the baby out of a window in a violent rage. Her grandmother saves the child and names her Life, who eventually grows into a remarkably strong and healthy individual. When war comes to Life’s community, she calls on women inside and outside her village to take action. In this way, Life demonstrates Nasrallah’s emphasis on female empowerment, especially as a female in a village setting.

 

 

Strong females characters are central within Nasrallah’s fiction, and they also permeate her non-fiction work as well. During her career as a journalist, Nasrallah published Nisaa' Ra'idat (Pioneer Women), a six-volume work published in 2000. The first three volumes are designated for Eastern pioneer women and feature mainly women of Arab and Lebanese decent, though they also incorporate important women from India and China. Volumes four through six feature important women of the West including the likes of Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, Amelia Earhart, Virginia Wolf, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Emily Dickinson. All of the women that were chosen, both in the eastern and western volumes, shared a common struggle: that is, of challenging and breaking the cultural norms that kept women oppressed and under-privileged. Nasrallah felt that the success of these women effectively created a space for other women to gain freedom and the ability to advance within their respective societies (“Books”). Her decision to publish six volumes of non-fiction chronicling strong women is reasonable; since she was a journalist for many years and is a strong and independent woman herself, she probably elevated these women as role models not only for herself, but also as models for other Lebanese women.



Five years after Jazirat al-Wahm (Island of Illusion), Nasrallah published Al-Younbouh (The Source) in 1978. Al-Younbouh—a collection of uplifting short stories written about the village in which Nasrallah was born—“tells the journey of life as it springs forward with all that it has to bear in strife, yet remaining marvelously bright” (“Emily Nasrallah,” Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi). During the war, Nasrallah published mostly short stories, which was an understandable course of action to take since the unpredictable nature of war sometimes only allows for shorter, more succinct writing (Cooke, “War’s” 7). Interestingly enough, although it was written in the context of the Lebanese Civil War, Al-Younbouh was actually published afterwards, and seldom refers to the conflict. Most of the stories in the collection were written beginning in 1961 and ending in 1975, and simply depict Nasrallah’s home village of Kfeir.



al-Mar'a fi 17 qissa (Women in 17 Stories), Nasrallah’s third collection of short stories, was published in 1984 and was “inspired by real life stories [...] woven around 17 different women” (“Books”). The war created an enormous amount of literary production, especially among women writers who found writing as an outlet to express their sadness and anger (Cooke, “Lebanon, Modern” 464). According to Miriam Cooke, much of the stories within the collection “depict the pain of the mahjar, and the pretense that is maintained for those left behind” (“War’s” 193). Mahjar, a term used to describe the diaspora of Arabs, is a driving force in Nasrallah’s emotions of the time; within her writing, she attacks those who left Lebanon and emigrated to another country, while simultaneously depicting the various conflicts facing those who decided to stay. Nasrallah’s prejudice against these “deserters” is palpable in her writing, and fuels the identification she has with being truly Lebanese: a “slow fortune” that is gained by those who stay, versus a “quick fortune” gained by those leave. Those who left would become rich and successful, yet would simultaneously lose their genuine Lebanese identity (Cooke “War’s” 161). According to Joseph Zeidan, the author behind Arab Women Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond, Nasrallah doesn’t condemn those who leave as much as she wishes to bring a particular dilemma to light: “There is promise of individual survival and economic improvement in the West for many Lebanese individuals, but at the same time, national survival depends on a community being present and willing to work toward peace” (“War’s” 224).

 

1984 also held the publication of al-Tahuna al-da'iʿa, translated into English as The Lost Mill. This collection, as well as Nasrallah’s 1988 collection titled Khubzuna al-yami (Our Daily Bread), centers around stories from the Lebanese Civil War (“Books”). Khubzuna al-yami was translated into English as A House Not Her Own and was her second collection that was translated into English. This collection depicts the tedious lifestyle of those surrounded by continuous conflict, similarly influenced by the war. In the introduction of the English version, Nasrallah writes, "[the collection] are a living testimony, rising from the core of fire and destruction" (qtd. in Johnson). Many of Nasrallah’s works are based upon personal experiences or the experiences of those that surround her, which gives them a sincerely testimonial nature (Johnson).



In 1996, six years after the war’s end, Nasrallah published Mahattat al-rahil (Stations on a Journey/Departure). The collection holds more than twenty short stories “derived from the living experiences…mainly from the author's village and her early childhood” (“Books”). A year later, Rawat lia al-ayyam (Days Recounted) was published, a new type of collection derived from real events with a young adult audience in mind. Al-Layali al-Ghajariyya (Gypsy Nights) was published a year after, and centers on similar themes as those in Mahattat al-rahil, emphasizing again the importance of Nasrallah’s identification with her home village and its traditions. Mahattat al-rahil was quite the accomplishment for Nasrallah, since it marked the final of three collections published in three consecutive years (“Books”).

 

Awraq Minsiah (Forgotten Papers) is a compilation of essays written between the 1960s and the 1990s, some of which had been previously unpublished, and others had only been published in local newspapers and magazines at the time. Many of the essays are about the author’s relationship with Canada, where her five siblings (four brothers and one sister) live as emigrants. The most recent of Nasrallah’s short story collections, Aswad wa Abyiad (Black and White), conveys the conflicting emotions of societies that have divided humanity into two hostile groups—“opinionated and dogmatic, which then leads to instability and hatred and terrorism”—an important theme that has become globally significant (“Books”).



In 2000, Nasrallah published Fil Bal: Recollection of Start-up of Journalistic Career. Focused on her memories of her beginnings as a journalist, Nasrallah includes “amusing sentimental adventures and anecdotes” that provide a refreshing alternative to her other pieces. The book illustrates Nasrallah’s beginnings as a woman living independently in Beirut, far from the influence of her small village. It details her time at the American University, as well as the experiences that came with marriage, giving birth, and her dedication to writing up to the start of the Lebanese Civil War. In this memoir, she includes photographs from that period of her life, adding a visual element to her usually textual style. Along those same lines, Nasrallah’s most recent collection, Riyah janoubiyyah (Southern Winds), was published in 2005, is illustrated in color, and provides another unique and beautiful alternative to her previous works (“Books”).

 

Emily Nasrallah is also well known in the Arab literature community for her moving novels and purposeful children's books. Although she wrote a total of seven novels and seven children's books, only a few have become popular among literary critics. Some critics argue that her first novel, Touyour Ayloul (Birds of September), is the first Arab bildungsroman: a literary genre in which the coming-of-age story about the psychological, moral, and relational growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood composes the main story and bears great significance. This novel establishes a common theme to her novels, depicting a heroine's quest to define herself in a patriarchal society which limits the individual freedom of women. Other literary critics have noted the uniqueness of Touyour Ayloul as compared to other novels written by Arab women, acknowledging that it exemplifies the positive contribution women have made towards the evolving Arabic novel. Nasrallah juxtaposes village and city time, contrasting nostalgic reflection of the past with the current alienation of urban residents in order to foment cultural awareness of identity shaped by connection to the land rather than being engulfed by city life. Traditional beliefs about women's purpose purely bearing sons, taboos about cross-sect marriage, and migration creating rifts with one's land, relationships, memories, and thus identity are all exposed in this personal novel.

Her second novel, Shajarat ad Dufla (The October/Oleander Tree), carries themes that conflict those represented in the traditional village in Tuyur Aylul. These conflicts cause the novel’s unconventional heroine, Rayya, to come to a tragic end. As a small child, Rayya faced her parents' contempt for not having been a boy and was sexually abused; then, when she grew up, she was forced into an arranged marriage. Although her betrothed husband agreed to elope, she still ended up deeply unsatisfied and committed suicide. Some critics attribute her decision to end her own life to the inevitable power of her town's traditional social constraints overcoming Rayya's resistance to its control; however, others believe Rayya’s death is her final victory over the stifling conservativism of her society. Rayya’s life or death decision speaks out about the effects of poorly arranged marriages and male dominance on a woman's psychological health.

Published in 1981 and translated to English in 1987, Al-Iqla' 'aks al-zaman (Flight Against Time) is perhaps Nasrallah’s most famous novel. Land and identity are two central themes in this novel. The novel takes place during Israel’s invasion of the central character's home land, Lebanon. On a quest for his identity, one of Nasrallah's village characters, Radwan, flies against time back to his motherland from his family's new home in the United States. It is a story of the woes of wartime emigrants who have one foot in the new country as they try to adapt to an unfamiliar culture, and one foot in their homeland as they worry about those they left behind.

When war broke out in Lebanon, Nasrallah's children's book, Yawmiyyat Hirr (Cat's Diary), took on themes that reflected the historic events taking place around her. She also highlighting the sense of disconnect that refugees often have after leaving their homeland. This children's story gives a cat's objective view of war-torn life in Lebanon. Nasrallah used real characters and events from her experience of the war in Lebanon to warn that war should be remembered and learned from, not covered up or erased from one's memory. This children's book has been translated into English, German, and Dutch.

Critics note that Nasrallah uses language very intentionally in her novels, employing the Lebanese village dialect to express chatter among women, traditional proverbs, and oral collections of memory that form the heartbeat of rural villages in Lebanon. Not only does she create a sense of local character through language, but she also expresses the versatility of the Arabic language to use different  words, phrases, and structures of Arabic to distinguish several social classes.



Three main themes permeate Emily Nasrallah’s works: the status of women, war, and emigration—all three of which she has strong personal ties to. Her writing contains themes and sentiments experienced worldwide. "Human experiences are similar everywhere in the world," she declares. 81 this year, she asserts with confidence that "as a writer, you never retire" (Foerch).