Jayyusi was born in
Safed to a
Palestinian father, the
Arab nationalist Subhi al-Khadra, and a
Lebanese mother. After attending secondary school in
Jerusalem, she studied
Arabic and
English literature at the
American University of Beirut. She married a
Jordanian diplomat, with whom she travelled and raised three children. In 1960, she published her first poetry collection,
Return from the Dreamy Fountain. In 1970, she received her PhD on Arabic literature from the
University of London. The title of her dissertation was "Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry". She taught at the
University of Khartoum from 1970 to 1973 and at the universities of
Algiers and
Constantine from 1973 to 1975. In 1973, she was invited by the
Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) to go on a lecture tour of Canada and the US, on a
Ford Foundation Fellowship. In 1975, the
University of Utah invited her to return as a visiting professor of Arabic literature, and from then on, she was based at various universities in the United States. Jayyusi died on 20 April 2023, four days after her 98th birthday, in
Jordan. ==Works==