Women all over the world have always struggled for the sake of freedom in different sides of life. Yet with the presence of well-established social and cultural canons that restrict expression in Berber communities, arts constituted for women a natural space for expressing such aspirations to personal feminine liberty as well as social freedom within the community. In particular, Berber women poetry in North Africa seems to offer a rich example of women’s quest for feminine freedom as a means to escape community restrictions.
This paper attempts to explore Berber women poetry as part of the African heritage. It seeks to examine language, meaning and feminine discourse in Berber women poetry that express socially-banned areas. Poems produced by Berber women, particularly in remote rural areas, express unfulfilled love stories, a husband’s long absence, and society’s unjust social judgement. These social issues are particularly sensitive for any woman to tackle publicly, and hence transforming poems into songs is an effective way of creating a space of freedom. Social ceremonies such as marriage or circumcision weddings have been spaces of freedom where women could express socially-forbidden issues directly among themselves or indirectly through songs.