For more than a decade, Katherine Zoepf has lived in or traveled throughout the Arab world, reporting on the lives of women, whose role in the region has never been more in flux. Only a generation ago, female adolescence as we know it in the West did not exist in the Middle East. There were only children and married women. Today, young Arab women outnumber men in universities, and a few are beginning to face down religious and social tradition in order to live independently, to delay marriage, and to pursue professional goals. Hundreds of thousands of devout girls and women are attending Qur’anic schools—and using the training to argue for greater rights and freedoms from an Islamic perspective. And, in 2011, young women helped to lead antigovernment protests in the Arab Spring. But their voices have not been heard. Their stories have not been told.
In Syria, before its civil war, she documents a complex society in the midst of soul searching about its place in the world and about the role of women. In Lebanon, she documents a country that on the surface is freer than other Arab nations but whose women must balance extreme standards of self-presentation with Islamic codes of virtue. In Abu Dhabi, Zoepf reports on a generation of Arab women who’ve found freedom in work outside the home. In Saudi Arabia she chronicles driving protests and women entering the retail industry for the first time. In the aftermath of Tahrir Square, she examines the crucial role of women in Egypt's popular uprising.
Deeply informed, heartfelt, and urgent, Excellent Daughters brings us a new understanding of the changing Arab societies—from 9/11 to Tahrir Square to the rise of ISIS—and gives voice to the remarkable women at the forefront of this change. Read Online Book Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World from Katherine Zoepf Full Free
Review :
"Shocking and moving... Zoepf's knowledge of Arabic, her open and inquisitive mind, her combination of lucidity and empathy, and perhaps her own background as a lapsed Jehovah's Witness allow her to understand these women's lives on their own terms without losing her footing either in their world or in ours." - New York Times Book Review
"Chilling...[Excellent Daughters] is like a "Lonely Planet" guide to the dark underbelly of the purity culture of Muslim societies...[It] exposes the tragic dynamics of power and control that lay siege to the bodies, minds and souls of women and girls through inherited rules of patriarchy, tribalism and morality. " - The Wall Street Journal
“Zoepf’s book directly challenges the Western idea of what it means to be an empowered woman, and a woman in the Middle East, and a reformer. It is a book that can change minds about people who are changing their own world. And it is a book of many stories that, taken together, hold the best kind of danger.”—New America Weekly
“ Zoepf’s deeply personal investigation into the small but radical acts these women commit not only illuminates the choices these women make every day, but also subverts many of the assumptions Western readers make about the Arab world.”— Washington Post
“Many of the women and girls in Excellent Daughters strive toward freedom, but they do so in ways that most Westerners would be unable to parse. Zoepf has achieved not only intimate access to this population, but also profound insight into the joys, anxieties, and revelations they experience behind the collective abaya. Superbly reported and compassionately told, at once clear-eyed and forgiving, these brave narratives will foster understanding, forgiveness, and respect. This moving book is an act of cultural translation of the very first order.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree and The Noonday Demon
“Zoepf… fluidly merges memoir with reportage while showing the Arab world from a unique perspective…. In her absorbing, window-opening book, Zoepf reveals the variety of women’s lives and interests away from political headlines and conventional stereotypes, and their power, often by small steps, to transform their world.”—Publishers Weekly
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Katherine Zoepf Book: Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World
Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World
Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the Arab World from Katherine Zoepf
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