Click here to access Jean Said Makdisi's Oral History audio files.

Additionally, you can click here to access the accompanying time-coded summary of the interview. Full transcripts and other oral history materials are available at the British Library Sound Archive, London, United Kingdom, and at the WLP office in Bethesda, MD. For more information, please consult our Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement Terms of Use. 

About the Interviewee* 

Jean Said Makdisi (Palestine)  is a writer and independent scholar. Makdisi was born in Jerusalem to a Palestinian family and raised in Egypt. She lived in America before returning to Beirut in 1972, where she taught English and Humanities as Beirut University College. She lived there throughout the Lebanese Civil War and the 1982 Israeli invasion. The impacts of these events are documented in her first book, Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir (1989). In 2005, she published Teta, Mother, and Me which tells the story of three generations of women.

*This brief biography was recorded concurrently with the subject’s interview for the WLP Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement.

About the WLP Oral History Project

The WLP Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement preserves stories and lessons of women’s rights activists from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America who have left their mark on the struggle for women’s advancement. We have collected dozens of oral histories from 25 countries, and the project is ongoing. Since 2014, WLP has collaborated with the Sound Archive of the British Library to host the repository.

Read more ABOUT OUR ORAL HISTORY PROJECT.

Read our Oral History Archive of the Global Women’s Movement Terms of Use.