Amalia Kahana-Carmon (Hebrew: עמליה כהנא-כרמון; 18 October 1926 – 16 January 2019) was an Israeli author and literary critic.
[1] Upon her return from military service, Kahana-Carmon attended the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and studied library science and philology.
While Kahana-Carmon was in London in 1951, she met and married an Israeli student named Arie Carmon, who studied civil engineering.
[3] During Kahana-Carmon’s time, authors who explored national ideals, usually represented by men's lives, were valued over those who focused on the individual or women’s experiences.
[5] That being said, Kahana-Carmon believed that all writers were outsiders, not because of social rejection but because others were incapable of understanding their commitment to their crafts.
[4] Kahana-Carmon writes about the lives of traditional women in male-dominated environments before marriage, during war, or during university years using a lyrical style that explores the depths of her characters’ emotions.
She reaches independence as a merchant through dialogue with this freed slave, where both characters are gender and race conscious.
These essays were inspired by a trip to America where she attended an international meeting for writers and was introduced to Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), who wrote postcolonial criticisms about race relations.