Latest Read

Well finally I finished Lipstick Jihad. That book took me forever. It would grab me and pull me in and then begin to bore me with political stuff so I'd put it down, but there was always something pulling me back in to continue reading until it was finished. I think over all it was a great book.

I'm now reading Dreams of Trespass - Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatima Mernissi. It's a tale of a young girls childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. This gentle memoir captures the hierarchy and decorum of growing up behind the door of a harem, which, as the author explains, is not necessarily a collection of wives, but rather a house in which all the women of a family are secluded. The work is also an engrossing portrait of Fez in the 1940s. Mernissi brings to vivid and often hilarious detail the exploits of the various women in the house: her mother, fighting against the veil, her grandmother, clinging to tradition, and especially a divorced aunt, who teaches her much about rebellion.

It is easy to read as well as interesting exploring the historical past.

Fatima Mernissi is a sociologist at University Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco. She is the author of Islam and Deomcracy, the Veil and the Male Elite, and Beyond the Veil, among other books.