Why am I passionate about this?
My work as an anthropologist has focused on understanding the worldviews of people of different backgrounds and nationalities in the Middle East. This is despite the tendency now for anthropologists to pursue more theoretical and academic research. Although there are many ways to acquire an understanding of culture, the best is of course to live and work with local people. The next best way is to listen to them explaining themselves. These books by cultural insiders do just that. The authors come from several sub-cultures of the Arab world and religions. They all describe their own versions of culture, that although overlapping in many ways, also show the distinctiveness of each group.
Andrea's book list on Middle Eastern culture written by insiders
Why did Andrea love this book?
In this autobiography, Ahmed describes her childhood growing up in a Muslim family in the 40s and 50s in Cairo where she witnessed many of the formative events that transformed Egypt—the end of British occupation, the changes wrought by Nassar’s reforms, and the break-down of the largely peaceful coexistence of multi-ethnic and multi-religious groups after the establishment of Israel. Ahmed goes on to school in England and then later to a life in the U.S. where she has difficulty resolving the contradictions of her comfortable Islamic upbringing with a growing sense of feminist identity. Ahmed is professor of women’s studies at Harvard Divinity School. Although not veiling herself, she supports Muslim women who wear the veil as a symbol of their own version of feminism.
1 author picked A Border Passage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
An Egyptian woman's reflections on her changing homeland-updated with an afterword on the Arab Spring
In language that vividly evokes the lush summers of Cairo and the stark beauty of the Arabian desert, Leila Ahmed movingly recounts her Egyptian childhood growing up in a rich tradition of Islamic women and describes how she eventually came to terms with her identity as a feminist living in America. As a young woman in Cairo in the forties and fifties, Ahmed witnessed some of the major transformations of this century-the end of British colonialism, the rise of Arab nationalism, and the breakdown of…