Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story (original 2003; edition 2003)by Tamim Ansary
Work InformationWest of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story by Tamim Ansary (2003)
Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This book really helped me understand better the situation in Afghanistan. ( ) Ansary writes with a duality that matches his bicultural heritage. His words are at once graceful and blunt; elegant and funny. He calls his upbringing "straddling a crack in the earth", but what he doesn't tell you is that his ability to navigate both the American and Afghan cultures is nothing short of expert mountaineering. His siblings may have chosen a definitive side after September 11th, but Ansary decided to use his bicultural perspective in an effort to find a deeper truth. It all started with an emotional email fired off to friends and family after the fall of the World Trade Towers. The email is included at the end of West of Kabul, in case you were wondering. The entire time Ansary was traveling around Tangier I was on edge. His experiences with the "guides" were troubling; as was the time he was duped about an upgrade to a sleeping car on a train. (By the way, I would like to see jovial and overly congenial Rick Steves navigate those kinds of harassments.) Even when Ansary traveled to city to city waiting anxiously for a letter from his girlfriend, I was on edge. Would she wait for him? You just have to read his memoir to find out. Interesting insight on Afghan culture. The email the author sent to friends following 9/11 summed up the state of Afghanistan very clearly. It does make you question why our country is at "war" with Afghanistan. This was a book that one of my daughters read for school several years ago. I think it would have had more impact on me if I had read it soon after 9/11 rather than 10 years later. no reviews | add a review
DistinctionsNotable Lists
A passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to twenty friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. The message spread, and in a few days it had reached, and affected, millions of people-Afghans and Americans, soldiers and pacifists, conservative Christians and talk-show hosts; for the message, written in twenty minutes, was one Ansary had been writing allhis life. West of Kabul, East of New York is an urgent communiqué by an American with "an Afghan soul still inside me," who has lived in the very different worlds of Islam and the secular West. The son of an Afghan man and the first American woman to live as an Afghan, Ansary grew up in the intimate world of Afghan family life, one never seen by outsiders. No sooner had he emigrated to San Francisco than he was drawn into the community of Afghan expatriates sustained by the dream of returning to their country -and then drawn backto the Islamic world himself to discover the nascent phenomenon of militant religious fundamentalism. Tamim Ansary has emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West. His book is a deeply personal account of the struggle to reconcile two great civilizations and to find some point in the imagination where they might meet. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)973.04915930092History and Geography North America United States United States Ethnic And National Groups Other GroupsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |