Authentic voices : How some selected women authors use their language to express women’s experiences, struggles, and challenges

Throughout history, a society’s predominant voice has silenced and minimized women’s voices. As a result, women writers created voices for other women by identifying with each other through literature. Literature written by women authors often does not follow the same linguistic strictures and structures created by males. Women authors “communicate a consciousness of their identity through paradoxes of sameness and difference-from other women, especially their mothers; from men; and from social injunctions for what women should be, including those inscribed in the literary canon” (Gardiner 354).In this paper, Saudi Arabian author, Fatimah al-Utaybi’s, “To Celebrate Being a Woman,” Syrian author, Ulfat al-Idilbi’s, Sabriya, African American author, Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Canadian author, Ethel Wilson’s, Swamp Angel are presented to illustrate the strong literary vitality of women’s writing. The authors’ linguistic and stylistic approaches are identified to illustrate how they use the parameters of language to express their experiences, struggles, and challenges.