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Author: Cat Parenti Publisher: Afghanistan ISBN: 9780996431088 Category : Travel Languages : en Pages : 318
Book Description
Thrill to this true-life adventure of an American heroine in a far off land After having visions of a strange land since childhood, Cat Parenti left New York and headed for the rugged landscape of Afghanistan, which felt like time traveling to the 12th century. There she fell in love with the people, the culture, and a tall, dark stranger. In book one of this sweeping two-volume memoir, Cat takes you on an unforgettable journey of full immersion into the sights, sounds, smells, food, rituals and beliefs of the people she came to know and love in this far off land. Her adventures are told with such exquisite detail, you'll feel as if you are there experiencing them first-hand. Afghanistan offers a rare opportunity to understand Afghan life, culture, and beliefs before the Taliban, and what it was like to be a gutsy, independent women living in a male-dominated world and thriving. From ordinary experiences like starting a business and getting a home to the extraordinary moments of falling in love with a nobleman and nearly losing her life on three separate occasions (featured in book 2), you may have to keep reminding yourself that what you are reading isn't fiction. Accolades for Afghanistan "Building bridges of cultural understanding and respect ... I thank you for giving voice to the wonderful history and culture of the region." - Hillary Rodham Clinton "The real story here is the author's love affair with an Afghan from a prominent family .... with vivid writing and an engaging story that kept me on the edge of my seat. It takes a brave woman to do [these] things." - Monica Bauer, award-winning playwright "The author takes readers through an innovative personal journey ... a magnetically hypnotizing adventure that is alternately mysterious and unique ... If you want to know what Afghanistan was like before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban, then [this book] is for you." - Abena Agyeman Fisher, Senior Editor, NewsOne Cat Parenti grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Afghanistan on and off for twenty years. She survived the political twists and turns of Afghan history from King Zahir Shah through the rise of the Taliban and started a successful business selling antique clothing and jewelry to U.S. museums and museum shops. She has given presentations on Afghanistan, including at the U.N., and taught Afghan cooking. She currently lives with her daughter in Arizona.
Author: Cat Parenti Publisher: Afghanistan ISBN: 9780996431088 Category : Travel Languages : en Pages : 318
Book Description
Thrill to this true-life adventure of an American heroine in a far off land After having visions of a strange land since childhood, Cat Parenti left New York and headed for the rugged landscape of Afghanistan, which felt like time traveling to the 12th century. There she fell in love with the people, the culture, and a tall, dark stranger. In book one of this sweeping two-volume memoir, Cat takes you on an unforgettable journey of full immersion into the sights, sounds, smells, food, rituals and beliefs of the people she came to know and love in this far off land. Her adventures are told with such exquisite detail, you'll feel as if you are there experiencing them first-hand. Afghanistan offers a rare opportunity to understand Afghan life, culture, and beliefs before the Taliban, and what it was like to be a gutsy, independent women living in a male-dominated world and thriving. From ordinary experiences like starting a business and getting a home to the extraordinary moments of falling in love with a nobleman and nearly losing her life on three separate occasions (featured in book 2), you may have to keep reminding yourself that what you are reading isn't fiction. Accolades for Afghanistan "Building bridges of cultural understanding and respect ... I thank you for giving voice to the wonderful history and culture of the region." - Hillary Rodham Clinton "The real story here is the author's love affair with an Afghan from a prominent family .... with vivid writing and an engaging story that kept me on the edge of my seat. It takes a brave woman to do [these] things." - Monica Bauer, award-winning playwright "The author takes readers through an innovative personal journey ... a magnetically hypnotizing adventure that is alternately mysterious and unique ... If you want to know what Afghanistan was like before the Soviet invasion and the rise of the Taliban, then [this book] is for you." - Abena Agyeman Fisher, Senior Editor, NewsOne Cat Parenti grew up in Brooklyn and lived in Afghanistan on and off for twenty years. She survived the political twists and turns of Afghan history from King Zahir Shah through the rise of the Taliban and started a successful business selling antique clothing and jewelry to U.S. museums and museum shops. She has given presentations on Afghanistan, including at the U.N., and taught Afghan cooking. She currently lives with her daughter in Arizona.
Author: Phyllis Chesler Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 1137365579 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 262
Book Description
Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.
Author: Tamim Ansary Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 1429935960 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
Tamim Ansary's passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict, West of Kabul, East of New York. Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to twenty friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people-Afghans and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative Christians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in twenty minutes, was one Ansary had been writing all his life. West of Kabul, East of New York is an urgent communiqué by an American with "an Afghan soul still inside me," who has lived in the very different worlds of Islam and the secular West. The son of an Afghan man and the first American woman to live as an Afghan, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life, one never seen by outsiders. No sooner had he emigrated to San Francisco than he was drawn into the community of Afghan expatriates sustained by the dream of returning to their country -and then drawn back to the Islamic world himself to discover the nascent phenomenon of militant religious fundamentalism. Tamim Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet.
Author: Farah Ahmedi Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476726787 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Farah Ahmedi recounts her heartbreaking journey from war-torn Kabul to America in her New York Times bestselling inspirational memoir. Farah Ahmedi's "poignant tale of survival" (Chicago Tribune) chronicles her journey from war to peace. Equal parts tragedy and hope, determination and daring, Ahmedi's memoir delivers a remarkably vivid portrait of her girlhood in Kabul, where the sound of gunfire and the sight of falling bombs shaped her life and stole her family. She herself narrowly escapes death when she steps on a land mine. Eventually the war forces her to flee, first over the mountains to refugee camps across the border, and finally to America. Ahmedi proves that even in the direst circumstances, not only can the human heart endure, it can thrive. The Other Side of the Sky is "a remarkable journey" (Chicago Sun-Times), and Farah Ahmedi inspires us all.
Author: Janice Minott Publisher: Trafford Publishing ISBN: 1425113494 Category : Afghanistan Languages : en Pages : 405
Book Description
Letters from Kabul is a unique page-turning memoir. Janice Minott paints an intimate portrait of an everyday Afghanistan just entering the twentieth century, its peace soon to be shattered by decades of military conflict. The author's humorous and reflective letters make us privy to what the Muslim culture teaches one ordinary American family. Her poignant details of a culture vastly different from our own promise to awaken us to new perspectives as well. The lilting rhythms of Janice's days draw us into Kabul with both zest and profundity. From picking up a family and moving them halfway around the world to acclimating to a world apart, from ventures into the maze of Kabul's Old City bazaars to bone-rattling jeep rides into the Hindu Kush, from an on-the-fly encounter with a friendly smuggler to the heart-warming hospitality of Afghan neighbors: if you've ever fantasized about the reality of living in the mountainous kingdom of Afghanistan. Letters from Kabul offers you an open ticket. Janice writes generously from her unique vantage point as a revolutionary New Englander. Teaching English to a class of adult Afghan women is her passport out of the stifling world of Foreign Service teas and coffees. While her husband oversees the nationwide Peace Corps volunteers, Janice undergoes vast personal transformation. Such transformation ends up being an unexpected gift.
Author: Deborah Rodriguez Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1588366073 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.
Author: Julie Hill Publisher: Bookbaby ISBN: 9781667804828 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 276
Book Description
An engaging and richly appreciative account of life in Afghanistan in Pre-Taliban times. Many books have been written in the past thirty-five years about Afghanistan's war and its geopolitics of terrorism, but none have provided an intimate view of the country and of Afghan society from the viewpoint of a largely neutral observer. Set during the golden years of Afghanistan --a rare period of peace in the mid1970-- it records memorable and sometime humorous diplomatic encounters between East and West. Its ground level perspective differs from the usual accounts of military men and politicians, offering an intimate view of Afghanistan and its people, including he foreign community. Fluent in Dari, the author was involved with the Diplomatic Wife's Organization and in conversations with ordinary citizens in the country's remote corners. Anything about Afghanistan can bear political ramifications, given the torturous history of that country, but these are foremost personal memoirs and impressions, more than any kind of deliberate or scholarly political history, hoping that the reader will begin to appreciate another Afghanistan behind today's raucous headlines. An Alexandrian Greek who now resides in Rancho Sta. Fe, California, Julie Hill has traveled and lived all over the world as the wife of an international diplomat and on her own as indefatigable adventurer even in her senior years. This is her fifth book, following A Promise to Keep: From Athens to Afghanistan (2003), The Silk Road Revisited: Markets, Merchants and Minarets (2006) Privileged Witness; Journeys of Rediscovery (2014) and In The Afternoon Sun: My Alexandria (2017). Speaking six languages, she worked as an international telecommunications executive before retiring in Southern California.
Author: Maryam Qudrat Aseel Publisher: Capital Books ISBN: 9781931868709 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 214
Book Description
"Exceptionally useful are (Aseel's) reflections on what it has meant to be a Muslim in America after September 11 . . . A fascinating multicultural coming-of-age story."--"Booklist."
Author: Cat Parenti
Author: Cat Parenti
Author: Cat Parenti-Hammad
Author: Phyllis Chesler
Author: Tamim Ansary
Author: Farah Ahmedi
Author: Janice Minott
Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Author: Mir Tamim Ansary
Author: Julie Hill
Author: Maryam Qudrat Aseel