Abla Farhoud

Abla Farhoud was born in Lebanon and immigrated to Canada with her family in the early 1950s. She worked as an actress in Quebec, Lebanon and France before turning her attention to playwriting in 1982. She writes in French, and sadly, few of her plays have been translated into English. Most of her published novels also remain untranslated. Farhoud completed an M.A. in theatre arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1985. Her thesis was eventually published as her play Les filles du 5-10-15¢.  In addition to plays and novels, Farhoud has written radio scripts, monologues and short stories.

Fiction

Hutchison Street

English translation from the French by Judith Weisz Woodsworth.
Montreal: Linda Leith Publishing, 2018.
e-book (Access restricted to members of the TMU community)

Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)

With one side in Mile End and the other in Outremont, Hutchison Street is inhabited by characters from many different backgrounds, including a community of Hasidim and a writer whose newest project is a novel about the people she has lived among for thirty-nine years. She traces the life stories of an aging singer, a bag-lady who feeds birds in a back alley, an Italian widow who grows tomatoes in her front yard, a Jamaican woman who longs to dance the night away, and a young Hasidic girl who keeps a diary.

A moving account of isolated individuals attempting to reach out to one another in one of Montreal’s most diverse neighbourhoods.

Anthologies (Drama)

“Game of Patience”

In Plays by Women: An International Anthology. Book 2, ed. Françoise Kourilsky, Catherine Temerson. New York: Ubu Reportory Theater Publications, 1994.

English translation by Jill Mac Dougall of “Jeux de patience”.

Also published in Anthology of Québec Women’s Plays in English Translation. Vol. II (1987-2003), ed. Louise H. Forsyth. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2008.
PS9315.5 .Q8 A58, 2006 v.2

Also published in Canada and the Theatre of War. Vol. II. Contemporary Wars, ed. Donna Coates and Sherrill Grace. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2009.
PS8309 .W3 C35 2008 v.2

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“The Girls From the Five and Ten”

In Plays by Women: An International Anthology. Book 1, ed. Françoise Kourilsky, Catherine Temerson. New York: Ubu Reportory Theater Publications, 1988.

English translation by Jill Mac Dougall of “Les filles du 5-10-15¢”.

Anthology (Fiction)

“Dounia-A-World”

In Voices in the Desert: An Anthology of Arabic-Canadian Women Writers, ed. Elizabeth Dahab. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2002, 46-67.
PS8235 .W7 V66 2002

English translation from the French by Jill McDougall of selections from Le Bonheur a la queue glissante.

Anthology

Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors’ Reflections

Z1039 .A87 R43 2006

Farhoud, Abla. “Pour allonger le fil de la mémoire.” In Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors’ Reflections. Danielle Schaub, photographer and ed. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2006, 134-135.

Selected Criticism and Interpretation

Dahab, F. Elizabeth. “Of Suffocated Minds and Tortured Hearts: The Universe of Abla Farhoud.”In her Voices of Exile in Contemporary Francophone Canadian Literature. Lanhan: Lexington Books, 2009.
PS9089.5.I5 D35 2009

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Connolly, Allison Spellman. “Transculturality and the Francophone Mother.” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2007.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses

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LaPorte, Julee R. “Unforgettable Cruelties: Influence of Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty on Abla Farhoud’s “Jeux de patience” and Wajdi Mouawad’s “Incendies”.” M.A. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses

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Proulx, Patrice J.  “Migration and Memory in Marie-Célie Agnant’s La dot de Sara and Abla Farhoud’s Le bonheur a la queue glissante.” In Textualizing the Immigrant Experience in Contemporary Quebec, eds. Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx.  Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004, 127-136.
PQ3917 .Q3 T49 2004