For a long time, Arab/Musli   m and Arab-American women were invisible or misrepresented in the West. They used to be either neglected or stereotyped as subhuman, too passive and mute. The continuous state of absence and invisibility, and the constant attack on Arabs and Muslims after 9/11 has generated the need to relocate and create a space through which Arab-American women can speak. In resistance to invisibility and silence, many Arab-American women writers have decided to give Arab-American women the right to speak about their own issues in order to prove Western stereotypes of Arab women to be wrong.