What It Means to Be Black in Saudi Arabia: Slavery and Racial Discrimination in Saudi Women’s Fiction

Abstract

Significant among the various taboos broken by contemporary Saudi women writers is the issue of slavery and its concomitant racial and colour prejudice. To explore the treatment of this subject, which remains strikingly understudied, this article focuses on three fictional works by two Saudi writers, Badriyya l-Bišr and Laylā l-Ǧuhanī, who have boldly faced a grave matter with complex psychological and socio-political aspects in order to expose and redress the oppression directed towards not only slaves but their descendants and other black-skinned individuals, male and female. My research argues that both writers, employing literature as a platform for reform, reveal that to a mainstream, tribe-conscious, colour-conscious Arabian culture, black skin can still signify and invite tacit and open forms of stigmatization, denigration, and abuse. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, coupled with textual analyses, this paper shows that the novels aim to restore legitimacy and dignity to a social segment long degraded and objectified due to their race and skin colour.