Writing and Teaching Maternal Language in a Non-maternal Place - ICLA+Congress - Final Version - 11-19

Aug 29, 2026

A personal and professional reflection on writing and teaching creative expression amid war, focusing on how maternal language and narrative can be transmitted from a “non-maternal” or in-between space. The author explains how novels shaped from Lebanese war memories foster women’s solidarity, identity, and empathy, and how language itself can be a source of fear and healing. It connects creative writing with academic research on women’s narratives and disappearance, arguing that storytelling preserves hope and enables translation of pain into language.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time14 min

AccessFree to download

Writing as survival and solidarity

From war memory to in-between narrative

Translating pain into language

Novels and research connections

B as in Beirut

Wild Mulberries

Other Lives

Writing and Teaching Maternal Language in a Non-maternal Place Iman Humaydan (Lebanon) First let me express my deep pleasure for being in Tbilisi. A big thankyou to the ICLA and the local GCLA and to every one of the beautiful persons, efficient organizers who made this event a real success. A special thank you to Darejan Gardavadze who took the initiative to translate three of my novels into Georgian language. Otherwise, I would not have been able to stand here in front of you today. I came to writing because of war. I came into teaching creative writing because of war too. Though my first novel “B as in Beirut” invoked sad memory among those witnessing the war, it created an atmosphere of women solidarity. Despite prevailing violence, women characters kept on dreaming and on staying together as long as they could. In their isolated building on the green line of the divided city Beirut, where they lived, they kept on feeling and enjoying their gatherings and the hot food scents that come out from the kitchen of Khosepha, one of the female characters. A warm and happy memory I chose to turn to, in my writing, as if without this embracing frame, the rest of such a painful experience could not be approached. It is writing solidarity amidst pain. It is about presenting characters who are neither totally “in” nor totally“out” of the war scene. They are “in between, staying in the shadow of what is going on out there in the street. They are the anti-heroes, as if they are living somewhere parallel to what is happening outside. However, “in-betweenness” is more than that. It is a state of being, that marked the lives of many including my life. Life on the verge of war, the continuous incertitude, the presumable tomorrow.“Inbetweenness”, was a strategy of survival, that I gave to my female characters during times of chaos. It is from that particular place that my work transmits something of the war. It was a way out, from being face to face with stories of horror that I meant NOT to mention or write about. It might be my only way to be able to come around sad memories, first by turning them into writing and then by positioning my characters inan “inbetween” space. This survival strategy that became a writing technique and a place from which transmission can be possible for me, has many echoes with contemporary narrative techniques. Readers in our modern societies identify with such withdrawn positions, and it is not necessary to have lived the Lebanese war, nor the Arab chaos, to be in the skin of the characters. My characters are neither victims nor perpetrators nor ideologically involved. Hence, there are no obstacles to identification and empathy among the readers, whoever, and wherever they are. Writing my first novel, “ B as in Beirut” was a painful experience because it urged me to bring back memory details into my head, memories I was not able to deal with. I did not know how to deal with violence in words, how to use vocabularies that I never used in my daily life, It was not only fear from violence but from language itself. I cut out a whole chapter from my novel before sending it to print. I took out scenes I wrote, that till today, I am not ready to face. But writing was vital for me. Sharing experience eases down the pain and transforms it, while it finds a translation into language. Before narrating, or before writing, there is a state, allow me to call a “non-possessing” of expression, as if I did not have the means to get it out of me. That’s why it took me 7 years after the end of the Lebanese war to be able to finalize and publish in 1997 my first work. B as in Beirut led to writing Wild Mulberries a few years later, during which I went back to the university to work on the subject of war memory. Many questions were a result of my experience with writing B as in Beirut: Why, in our part of the world, there so much violence? Why does any sociopolitical conflict end up taking a sectarian or religious

FAQs

Why did the author start writing and teaching creative writing?

The author came to writing because of war, and teaching creative writing was also driven by that same experience and need to express it through narrative.

What does “in-betweenness” mean in the author’s work?

“Inbetweenness” is described as a survival strategy during chaos, a state that shapes characters’ lives and helps them deal with what is happening outside.

How are the author’s novels connected to academic research?

Academic research on women’s narratives and disappearances is said to echo characters from the author’s earlier novel, strengthening the fictional atmosphere and expanding strategies of survival in later creative work.

Aug 29, 2026

Upload by Olivia Brown