A Border Passage (March 19, 2018)

March is Women’s History Month in many parts of the world. To help celebrate the recognition of women, I will only be featuring female authors during the month of March.

A Border Passage: from Cairo to America — A Woman’s Journey

“As she journeys across cultures, an Egyptian woman struggles to define herself. In language that vividly evokes the lush summers of Cairo and the stark beauty of the Arabian Desert, Leila Ahmed tells the story of her life. This moving memoir begins with her Egyptian childhood amid the rich tradition of Islamic women, and ends with her longing to understand and to come to terms with her own identity as a feminist living in America. Growing up in Cairo in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Ahmed witnessed some of the major transformations of this century: the end of British colonialism, the creation of Israel, the rise of Arab nationalism under Nasser, and the breakdown of Egypt’s once multireligious society. Through the turmoil, she searches to define herself–and to understand how the world defines her–as a woman, a Muslim, an Egyptian, and an Arab. She poignantly reflects upon issues of language, race, and nationality while unveiling the hidden and often misunderstood world of women’s Islam.”

(from the blurb on the back cover of Ahmed’s memoir)

About the Author

“Leila Ahmed (Arabic: لیلى احمد‎) is an Egyptian American professor of Women’s Studies and Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. Prior to coming to Harvard, she was professor of Women’s Studies and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge before moving to the United States to teach and write.

In her 1999 memoir A Border Passage, Ahmed describes her multicultural Cairene upbringing and her adult life as an expatriate and an immigrant in the West. She tells of how she was introduced to Islam through her grandmother during her childhood, and she came to distinguish it from “official Islam” as practiced and preached by a largely male religious elite. This realization would later form the basis of her first acclaimed book, Women and Gender in Islam (1993), a seminal work on Islamic history, Muslim feminism, and the historical role of women in Islam.”

(from Goodreads)

 

 

Book of the Week: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (January 22, 2018)

I read this book nearly four years ago and wrote a mini-review on Goodreads. Here it is in its entirety:

I saw Rebecca Skloot on The Daily Show months ago. Her interview with Jon intrigued me, so I added her book to my “to read” list.

I’ve always been fascinated by science. This book is a great combination of non-fiction, science, and science fiction. Skloot writes in such a way that a person without a background in science can understand the impact that Henrietta Lacks’s cells had on medical progress. She presents the family as real people, not just numbers or faces. The Lacks family has been deeply affected by the knowledge that Henrietta’s cells have been used to find cures for various diseases. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until Skloot’s book was published that they received any recognition at all.

This book reads almost like a sci-fi novel; it deals with medical research but also the ethical issues of race during the mid-20th century. It is truly fascinating what science can do. Henrietta’s name needs to live on, just as her cells have.

About the Author

Rebecca Skloot is an award winning science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and many other publications. She specializes in narrative science writing and has explored a wide range of topics, including goldfish surgery, tissue ownership rights, race and medicine, food politics, and packs of wild dogs in Manhattan. She has worked as a correspondent for WNYC’s Radiolab and PBS’s Nova ScienceNOW. She and her father, Floyd Skloot, are co-editors of The Best American Science Writing 2011 . You can read a selection of Rebecca Skloot‘s magazine writing on the Articles page of this site.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , Skloot’s debut book, took more than a decade to research and write, and instantly became a New York Times best-seller. She has been featured on numerous television shows, including CBS Sunday Morning, The Colbert Report, Fox Business News, and others, and was named One of Five Surprising Leaders of 2010 by the Washington PostThe Immortal Life was chosen as a best book of 2010 by more than 60 media outlets, including Entertainment WeeklyUSA Today, O the Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, People Magazine, New York Times, and U.S. News and World Report; it was named The Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. It has won numerous awards, including the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and two Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and Best Debut Author of the year. It has received widespread critical acclaim, with reviews appearing in The New Yorker, Washington Post, Science, and many others. Dwight Garner of the New York Times said, “I put down Rebecca Skloot‘s first book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time …It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart.” See the press page of this site for more reactions to the book.”

(from Goodreads)

NEW FEATURE: Book of the Week

Hi everyone!

As you most probably know, I love using social media and posting ideas, suggestions, and compelling things online. Over the break, I decided to put my social media usage to even better use by creating more interest around the vast number of books I have in my classroom library. Thus, in an effort to get more students (and staff!) reading, I am going to be posting a “Book of the Week” here on my digital portfolio.

Each week, I will copy the blurb from a selected book into a blog post along with some information about the author. I will then feature the book in my classroom window. My hope is that this idea will garner enough traction that even more books get checked out (literally and figuratively) from my classroom.

If you have any book suggestions, please let me know. I have enough books set aside right now to keep me going until Chinese New Year, but I’d love to hear from other people as well. Which books do you recommend for others?

Don’t forget to watch this space for my weekly update! Cheers!!