celebratingamazingwomen:

May
Ziade (1886-1941) was a Lebanese-Palestinian poet
and translator, seen as a “pioneer of Oriental feminism”. She was a prolific
writer and an important figure in the cultural renaissance of the Arab world at
the beginning of the 20^th century.

She was an accomplished polyglot, completely bilingual
in Arabic and French, and knew several other languages including English,
Italian, German and Spanish. She was a strong proponent of women’s rights and
gender equality, and at one point was even admitted to a psychiatric hospital
for expressing feminist views. During the 1920s and 30s she hosted the most
famous literary salon of the Arab world in Cairo.