Feminist Daughters with Military Fathers

This book is a tribute to the memory of my father Mouhamd ou Lahcen (around 1919-2005), a rural, illiterate, self-made Berber man who served in the French army before joining the Moroccan army after independence in 1956. In addition to my and my family’s recollections, I interviewed twenty-five Moroccan women of my generation whose fathers were in the military and who are now feminist leaders in various fields. In so doing I seek to both honor the memory of my father and his generation of military rural Berber men, and draw attention to the forgotten role of these men in opening the door of education to the second generation of Moroccan feminists. Marginalized in both the colonial and Moroccan narratives, as well as in the Moroccan feminist discourses, the legacy of these men deserves recognition in the social history of modern Morocco.-- from jacket.