Mejdulene Shomali's Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives is a book that I, and undoubtedly many others, have been waiting for. Not many books exist on queer Arab sexualities, and very few take up women exclusively. The books that do exist either focus on a particular historical period, have a religious emphasis in Islamic texts, or examine a particular nation such as Lebanon or the Maghreb. Between Banat exhumes Arab women's sexualities from obfuscation by constructing an affective archive of feminine queerness read through multiple genealogies and conceptual strategies. In her survey of the aesthetic archive, from Golden Era Egyptian films to contemporary publications and everything in between, Shomali elegantly puts forward a conceptual framework to uncover love and desire among women living under historically defined and ideological conditions. Indeed, her method of analysis is striking in its capacity to exhume queer traces and affective ruptures...

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