Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (2007)

I really enjoyed the memoir/ historical way this book read. I found it to be enlightening to the plight of women in Afghanistan, as well as other areas of the middle east. It was also interesting to learn about the cultural definitions of beauty and how they vary from one culture to another ( )

This is a great story. It points out the differences in culture and custom as Debbie trys to teach the Afgan women about hair and make-up! fun to read. ( )

This is the third book I've read in three days and all three were on different views of humanity and improving lives and none were even slightly alike but all were 5-star books. Proper review coming up... sometime. ( )

debbi, nos cuenta todo lo que las mujeres en afganistan viven dia a dia, tanto en el matrimonio, como en la familia, o en las calles, pero mas que nada es la interesante narración de la belleza de estas mujeres debajo de esa horrible tela la cual cubre el pelo u la mitad de la cara; hecho el cual no las ha limitado de tener vestuarios hermosos y mucho menos un maquillaje perfecto. ( )

Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, "until women give up respectability, they will never seize their freedom." Rodriguez takes this advice to heart and pursues her goals like a kamikaze with a curling iron.

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez (Random House 2007) is an account of an American hairdresser who goes to Afghanistan after 9/11 with a relief organization, expecting to rough it and provide minor medical assistance and cleanup. Instead, her skills as a hairdresser are enthusiastically welcomed in the ex-patriot community. During her brief sojourn she decides to come back and open a beauty salon but ends up joining an already existing effort to start a beauty school in Kabul. She wants to improve the lives of Afghan women by giving them the skills and tools to start small businesses that will allow them some financial independence and freedom. It's an admirable goal that has major obstacles.

But from the opening pages, we realize this is not the usual humanitarian tale. No, it's a wild tale told by a wild woman. I'm convinced Rodriguez must have been a thrill seeker hyped for excitement in any form. Debbie marries a non-English speaking Afghan man less than a month after she has met him and hides it from her family back in Michigan. Her new husband-- she just got rid of an abusive one back in Michigan -- already has another wife in Saudi Arabia who he continues to visit. She agrees to let her teenage son offer to marry a teenage Afghan girl to get her out of the clutches of a lecherous old man. She has business dealings with a Taliban drug-dealer. She gets her Afghan husband to regularly threaten to kill various people who are behaving badly. She helps a young Afghan woman fake her virginity during her consummation ceremony. She accosts her extremely dangerous neighbors with an assault rifle while in a nightgown, at their front door, not hers. Everyday is a roller coaster with new dangers and drama. I asked myself is Rodriguez brave or simply crazy?

And this tell-all tale isn't told with any literary flare. There are sudden jumps in time and place that are confusing. Characters are not well developed. Important pieces of information are left unexplained. The memoir isn't resolved well. Yet, it is thoroughly engrossing. You just want to know what is going to happen and how it will all bring about the positive changes that Rodrigues, the Afghan women, and you the reader all desperately want. The strength of the memoir is that it gives a view into the intimate lives of everyday Afghan women, most of them treated like slaves either for sex or for physical labor. And despite crazy Debbie's Rambo style, I am inspired by her gutsy willingness to use seemingly small gifts to try to make big changes.