The View from Garden City
By Carolyn Baugh
(Forge Books, Hardcover, 9780765316578, 336pp.)
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback
Categories: General
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Selected by Indie Booksellers for the September 2008 Indie NotablesAuthor Carolyn Baugh tells the moving story of a young American student living in the Garden City district of Cairo. Having come to study Arabic, she learns far more from the Egyptian women, young and old, she meets within the swirl and tumult of Garden City. Living, loving, and flourishing amid the fierce inflexibility of tradition, these women reveal a fascinating world of arranged marriages, secret romances, and the often turbulent bonds between four generations of Arab mothers and daughters.
Meet the women of Garden City:
Huda, who waited desperately for the man she loved until she could wait no longer
Karima, who found her husband in a collapsing post-war world
Afkar, who paid a dreadful price for her freedom
Selwa, who suffered through the deaths of her children
Yusriyya, who left her native village for a new life in the city
Samira, who loved a man who was not hers
Rich with the sights and sounds of modern Egypt, The View from Garden City lifts the veil of privacy to explore the stunning inner strength of women torn between their dreams for the future and the sacrifices women must make in a world of harsh realities.
Carolyn Baugh, a native of Indiana, studied Arabic and Arab Literature at Duke University, graduating summa cum laude. She spent her junior year abroad studying at the American University in Cairo. She rowed crew for AUC on the Nile, where she met her husband, a member of the Egyptian National Crew team. Ms. Baugh and her husband live in Philadelphia with their two daughters.
Ms. Baugh is now in her fourth year of the Ph.D. program in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, where her focus is gender issues in Islamic law. She is a frequent public speaker on the subject Islam and women, and is a contributor to The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.
“In Baugh’s evocative debut, an unnamed American woman studying at the American University in Cairo bears witness to the lives of several Cairene women, finding their lives at once heartbreaking, fascinating, and inspiring. . . . [Baugh's] observations and empathy are often spot on.”---Publishers Weekly
“Baugh weaves a rich tapestry of women’s lives through their stories. Without preaching, she demonstrates that patriarchal custom, not religion, places women in subservience. The narrator’s neighbors, all vibrant, intelligent individuals, provide the narrator with more of an education than her classes. This timely, important, readable book should be in most libraries.”---Library Journal
“A beautifully written, bittersweet journey into the complexities of life for six Egyptian women. Baugh magically peels away the layers of their complicated world as each crosses into forbidden territory, creating a masterpiece of intensely felt details that will seem at once strange, but familiar.”---Jean Sasson, international bestselling author of Princess
“The View from Garden City provides a striking testament to the amazing spirit of the unseen and unheard Arab woman living in Cairo. These women, though powerless to make their own decisions, not only survive the mental, psychological, and physical abuse inflicted on them, but through their unbreakable bonds with each other, actually triumph and become the core, the essence, of their society.”---Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent
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