Women writing kibbutz: The development of a women’s literature in the kibbutz movement in the pre-state period

This article tracks the development and nature of literature written by women in the kibbutzim in the years before the establishment of the state. It distinguishes three periods, in the years between 1920 and 1950, in which the ideological and aesthetic formation of a “kibbutz literature” were explored and discussed, during which, alongside men’s literary production, women’s narrative writing was developing as well, following a conditioned rhythm of its own. The article discusses the women’s literary leadership in the labor settlements, as well as the leadership that dictated and encouraged non-canonical forms of writing while simultaneously repressing women’s canonical aesthetic-literary production. It concludes that even if women’s narrative writing in the kibbutzim was shunted aside and forgotten over the years, it constituted an alternative to the literary model revolving around the male pioneer and filled in the blanks on the kibbutz literary map with its own distinctive and different revelations, both informational and poetic.