Praise for the first edition:

"An impressive collection of more than 50 pieces--essays, poems, folktales, short stories, memoirs, film scripts, lectures/speeches--by Arab women challenging the widely accepted view of Middle Eastern women as submissive non-thinkers to whom feminism is a foreign concept." --Booklist

"Anyone interested in good writing should read [Opening the Gates]. Here are first-class stories with the energy and freshness we expect from a beginning." --Doris Lessing, The Independent

"This collection of stories, speeches, essays, poems and memoirs bears fierce testimony to a tradition of brave Arab feminist writing in the face of subjugation by a Muslim patriarchy."--Publishers Weekly

"This impressive collection of writings by Arab women . . . represent[s] a powerful series of vignettes by women who were both insightful and gifted, into the lives of women who have lived 'behind the veil' over the last 100 years."--Arab Book World

"An expression of indigenous, intrepid feminism in the Arab world."--Ms.

"Opening the Gates succeeds not because of its methodology, but because of the stories the women tell."--Voice Literary Supplement