Book cover of Brownies and Kalashnikovs: A Saudi Woman's Memoir of American Arabia and Wartime Beirut

Book description

Fadia, a Saudi Arab, grew up in the strictly circumscribed and tailor-made 'desert Disneyland' of Aramco (the Arabian American Oil Company). This slice of modern, suburban, middle America was located in Dhahran, Aramco's administrative headquarters in Saudi Arabia, a theocratic Muslim kingdom run according to strict Wahabbi Shari'a law. Eventually,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Brownies and Kalashnikovs as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Because 20th Century Aramco was a closed company inside a closed culture inside a closed country, and because the laws of Sharia and strict corporate guidelines silenced the stories of women, I found it frustrating if not impossible to uncover narratives written by female Arab authors. Then I discovered Basrawi’s fascinating memoir about growing up in Dhahran. It provided riveting insight into the life of a teenage girl whose father was one of the first Saudi Muslim employees allowed to live inside the gated community. Basrawi vividly details coming of age in the middle of a white community and…

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Book cover of The Rosewood Penny

The Rosewood Penny by J.S. Fields,

2023 Queer Indie Award Nominee!

The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.

On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…

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