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Zoya’s Story: An Afghan Woman’s Struggle for Freedom by Zoya with John...
Zoya was just a year old when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. By age 4, she made a Russian woman soldier cry when she refused to accept her proffered chocolate. She was raised...
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Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah...
Writing a memoir these days is dangerous business: you can be outed on Oprah as the worst liar, along with your publisher (James Frey, A Million Little Pieces), you can become infamous overnight for...
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The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, translated by Ingrid Christophersen
Okay, here we go again (see Kabul Beauty School below). We have a (fascinating, allegedly true) story, and then the (disturbing) story about the (now accuracy-challenged) story. Just after the fall of...
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My Name is Parvana by Deborah Ellis
What delighted anticipation I felt when I heard that Deborah Ellis‘ multi-award-winning Breadwinner Trilogy (The Breadwinner, Parvana’s Journey, and Mud City), after almost a decade since its...
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The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Dastardly Dames | Njinga: “The Warrior Queen”...
Those Dastardly Dames are increasing their fold (yippeee!), this time to welcome a 16th-century West African queen named Njinga, meaning “twist,” because she was born with the umbilical cord wrapped...
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Distant View of a Minaret by Alifa Rifaat, translated by Denys Johnson-Davis
Given the monumental (continuous) changes post-Arab Spring, my recent (ongoing) search for women’s voices before and after led me to an unusual writer who defies many expectations of what it means to...
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The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis
Already designated “definitive political biography” on its back cover, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Brooklyn College political science professor Jeanne Theoharis will reside in my personal...
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The Red Chamber by Pauline A. Chen + Author Profile
When the teenaged Pauline Chen arrived in Harvard Yard, her intention was to become a writer. The American-born daughter of Taiwanese parents, she grew up amidst Long Island’s endless strip malls and...
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Author interview: Pauline A. Chen
A couple of days after filing my feature on Pauline A. Chen, I got on the phone to ask her all the questions I couldn’t find answers to out there in the virtual world of google-ing. True confession...
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Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories by Lauren Groff
If the name Lauren Groff sounds familiar, that might be because her latest title, Arcadia, appears on oh-so-many Best-of-2012 lists. I admit I haven’t yet read Arcadia (it’s high in my ‘must-read’...
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Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves, & Other Female Villains by...
If beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, then perhaps bad behavior might be, too. “In this book we are taking a look back through history at all manner of famous female felons,” write mother/daughter...
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The House Girl by Tara Conklin
Give me a story with two narratives interwoven through nonlinear timelines and, usually, I’ll be one committed reader. The House Girl opens in 1852 rural Virginia with a teenage slave girl named...
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The Servant by Fatima Sharafeddine, translated by Fatima Sharafeddine
At 15, Faten is uprooted from her village life to become a live-in servant to a wealthy family in Beirut, where violence from the ongoing Lebanese Civil War seems neverending. Her father’s decision to...
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The Twin Knights by Osamu Tezuka, translated by Maya Rosewood
In order to fully enjoy this manga, you first need to read its prequel, Princess Knight (in two volumes in English translation). Come back when you’re finished … this will wait. For those of you...
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All That Is by James Salter
What began as gorgeous elegiac memory about misplaced courage and final hope as World War II comes to an end in the Pacific, devolves into a middle-aged man’s tedious reflections about his search for...
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