The question of representation is closely linked to the environment(s) of reception. The author’s study demonstrates the interdependence between the two. She examines a series of subtle but cumulatively meaningful shifts in Margot Badran’s 1986 English translation of the Egyptian writer Huda Sha’rawi’s Mudhakkirati (My Memoirs, 1981) to demonstrate how the politics of reception can constrain our reading of a text by an Arab woman. The translation, entitled Harem Years: The Memoirs of an Egyptian Feminist, was undertaken and published within a specific reception environment, that of the United States, which is shaped by a certain horizon of expectations for writing by and about Arab and Muslim women. In engaging with Arab and Muslim women, the United States reading public largely draws on a long history of Western stereotypes about Arabs and Islam. The author discusses three such stereotypes: the Arab and Muslim woman as a victim of gender oppression; as an escapee of her intrinsically oppressive culture; and as the pawn of Arab male power. She traces the historical development of these stereotypes.