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Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation, 1870–1930 by Hoda Yousef (review)

ComposingEgyptbuilds on scholarship published in the last threedecades onnationalism, the press, education, gender, popular culture, and technology. While two or even three of these fields have intersected in previous studies, Hoda Yousef skillfully weaves all these threads together through the notion of gendered public literacies, broadening the definition of literacy to include all access to thewrittenword. Yousef ’s understanding of where andhowEgyptians learned to reador consume literature secondhandbegins, nevertheless, by critically examining the educational system.While earlier studies of education focused on institutions, more recent studies have focused on the role of the British occupation, class, and the gendered uses of power. Building on this foundation, Yousef mines the curriculum and press from the late nineteenth century through the interwar era to understand the power of a new writing genre, the composition (insha). School curriculums broadened the area of writing skills to include writing for the purpose of meeting public demand for the “cultivation of nationalism and loyalty” among students (98). In doing so, they pioneered a movement away from traditional forms of scribal, bureaucratic communication. Gender and class are central features of Yousef ’s work, as these were the two central axes on which debates over literary reform centered. Not only were women seen as “susceptible to themoral dangers of reading,” butmenwere too (62). In 1881 theMinistry of the Interior sought to ban all books “harmful to the intellect” (62). Barriers to reading or accessing these potentially harmful books were not unsurmountable, however.Women of high social class and good moral character broke or reformulated cultural boundaries through new literary practices. They entered the masculine space of publishing by participating in the women’s press and by issuing poetry and autobiographies.