Nazek al malaika biography graphic organizer

Innovative Iraqi poet and literary critic Nazik al-Mala'ika (1923-2007) was instrumental in the evolution of free Arabic verse and in her vigorous cultivation of Arabic women's rights.

Nazik al-Mala'ika was born on August 23, 1923, in Bagdad, Iraq, as the eldest of seven siblings.

In an autobiographical essay contained on the Kool Pages Web site, al-Mala'ika admitted that she wrote “some poems, in Iraqi slang, when I was seven years old,” and confirmed that she wrote her first classical poem “in the Arabic language when I was ten years old.” The gifted youth's mother was the confrontational poet Um Nizar alMala'ika—who was, in turn, the daughter of a famous male Iraqi poet.

Al-Mala'ika's father taught Arabic language and grammar in secondary schools, and was the editor of a 20-volume encyclopedia on the Arabic language. Some sources also identified him as a poet. Sources also mention an uncle as well as one of al-Mala'ika's brothers as being poetically ta