The World of Obituaries: Gender Across Cultures and Over Time.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.
• Position: Book Review

The World of Obituaries: Gender Across Cultures and Over Time. By MUSHIRA EID. Detroit: WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002. Pp. 332.

This is a book which, at first glance, appears to be on a macabre subject. Eid informs the reader at the outset how she became interested in the realm of obituaries: "I have had a lifelong fascination with obituaries. As a young adult in Cairo, Egypt, I would turn to the obituary pages first before reading other sections of the newspaper ... I recall doing the same thing with English newspapers later on, but I also recall thinking English newspaper obituaries were very different from their Arabic counterparts" (p. 13). In the epilogue to the volume, one comes to appreciate Eid's passionate convictions for her topic: "I will always remember the disappointment, perhaps even anger, I felt every time I realized that the world of obituaries, too, is gendered and culture differentiated. It did not seem fair, and it still does not" (p. 202).

The work undergoing review is an in-depth historical and comparative study over the period of half a century (1938-88) of the cross-cultural differences reflected in the obituary columns of Arabic, Persian, and English newspapers. She has examined 4,400 obituaries, using names, titles, and occupations as linguistic reference points. The following newspapers served as the sources: Al-'Ahram for Egypt, Ettele'at for Iran, and The New York Times for the United States. My remarks which follow will concentrate on Arabic and Persian.

As I began reading the book, I confess I fell into the first grouping of people Eid mentions, who responded upon learning of her years-long research project: "How macabre! Why not do something with the living?" (p. 13). As I continued reading, I came to understand the reflections of the social reality operative in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world in general, Iran, and the U.S. (and, I believe, in other English-speaking countries). Eid, to be sure, is well aware of the ramifications of her theme to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis--indeed, cross-cultural linguistic relativity is an idea which occurred to me over and over again as I read the book. Eid puts it as follows: "Can obituaries, for example, have their own conventions? Can they create a world of their own relatively independent of the social reality beyond them?.... How does it differ from the social reality outside it? I found myself engaged in a debate reminiscent of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis about...