Why read A Border Passage?

Book cover of A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Border Passage as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrea B. Rugh

Author

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…

From Andrea's list on The best books on Middle Eastern culture written by insiders.