Hey guys, it's Hibah, and this is Kernan Cultures.

Stories from the Middle East and the spaces in between.

And one story that always kind of captures my imagination.

The streets lost culture.

And you're listening to Kearning cultures.

Today, we're going to switch things up a bit.

There's this book that came out in August of 2019

that our Casey team has been kind of obsessed with,

and we want to share it with you.

The book is called Our Women on the Ground. It's a collection of English essays by Arab female reporters

talking about what it's like reporting on and from their home countries. It was very difficult

for some of them to take a step backwards and to even approach the notion of telling their own stories versus the stories of others.

My name is Ahara Hankir, or Zara Hankir, depending on who's pronouncing it.

I'm a London-based journalist and I am Lebanese.

She's also the editor of the book, Our Women on the

Ground. I would say the idea had been brewing for years. Being an Arab woman journalist myself,

who understands both the Western media landscape and the local Arab media landscape,

I always felt that those who had attention or who commanded the narrative in the global media space were Western for the most part and for decades had been male as well.

I think that's starting to change.

But my goal always had been to amplify the voices of local women journalists who were doing work on the

ground because I felt that the challenges that they were facing were unique. The reporting that

they were doing was unique and that we needed to celebrate the fact that they were doing

...