Front Men and Back Women
Simons_Front_Men_2000.pdf (128.1Kb)Abstract
On April 7, 2000, the New York Times printed a thirty-six
paragraph-long obituary of Tunisia’s former president, Habib
Bourguiba. While it described Bourguiba as a leader who “did much
to enhance women’s rights in Tunisia,” it is not until the twenty-first
paragraph that we learn he had a first wife, a Frenchwoman, whom
he divorced in 1961. In that same year, we are finally informed in the
second to last paragraph, he married his second wife, Wassila ben
Ammar, “a Tunisian from a prominent family” and someone who
“came to be seen as a power within the presidency.” But how much of
a power? And with what consequence? How are we to know?
Description
Literary review of: Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant, by Dusko Doder & Louise Branson.
New York: The Free Press, 1999.
America’s Boy: A Century of Colonialism in the Philippines, by James Hamilton-Paterson. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. 462 pp.
Mandela: The Authorized Biography, by Anthony Sampson. New York: Knopf,1999. 672 pp.