Rating: 
Summary: More praise for A Border Passage
Review: "A luxurious banquet of sensual images. . . Ahmed has spread a sumptuous table . . . her powers of observation and her skills and a communicator are keen . . . Extraordinary . . . Like a lapidary turning a gem repeatedly in order to refine and polish it to its highest sheen, Ms. Ahmed is never content to simply accept an apparent truth without examining it from all sides . . . Her admonitions are so kind and her reasons so sound that we never resent them, even when they are most accurate in exposing our weaknesses, prejudices, and failures." --G. K. Nelson, Savoy Magazine
Rating: 
Summary: A Border Passage
Review: A Border Passage by Leila Ahmed is an interesting book and definitely worth your time. Within this book Ahmed confront issues of colonialism and differences between the Islam of women and that of men. The story is written as an autobiography as Ahmed recounts her childhood. The juxtaposition of the Egypt and England, where she goes to school, illuminates considerations of post-colonial loss of identity. A book that I strongly recommend for anyone interested in learning more about Islam.
Rating: 
Summary: Jane Obelesk
Review: A Border Passage is not a typical autobiography. It has many elements of an autobiography, but it is also a book of well reasoned essays on some of the most difficult aspects of the history of Egypt and its culture. Essays on Islam, imperialism and on the identity and language of Egypt Leila Ahmed recount of her childhood and upbringing in Cairo and Alexandria is beautifully written. Her complex relationship with and her views of her mother are an important theme in the first half of the book. Her analysis of the social impact of the colonial and post colonial on her own family and the events that surrounded her is particularly insightful. In writing this book Leila Ahmed clearly has done a considerable amount of sole searching with objective detachment. She describes that process and articulates clearly her reasoning. You can actually sense the struggle and pain she went through to reach a particular conclusion. This is the work of a sensitive person with a superb analytical mind and an ability to reflect. I particularly enjoyed her pointing out of what was a recollection and knowledge in retrospect, in her process of understanding an issue or an emotion. The book contains a very well researched and argued section on the "Arabization" of Egypt. Here, she presents why she is not an Arab, but rather an Egyptian, from a historical, cultural, linguistic and social viewpoint. She illustrates with significant historical substantiation Arabism in Egypt as a colonial invention. Yet, she appears to be willing to accept an Arab identity as well as an Egyptian one in the west, because of what she shares with Arabs in the west. She talks of two "Arabnesses", I think I understood her correctly, but I am not sure. If you are interested in the subject you will find this part very rewarding, and if you couldn't care less, it will still be fascinating. It is her search for an identity, and her willingness to accept an additional identity in the west so as not to see herself escaping, in vain, the negative connotations that she has dedicated her life to fight. A Border Passage is remarkable in its political correctness. This, largely, comes across as natural political correctness, not forced or contrived. It comes across from Leila Ahmed's own suffering from racial, religious and gender discrimination. She tells of stories of a teacher giving her no grades, because he couldn't believe an Egyptian could do in English what she did. She tells of man a spitting in her face in England once he found out she is Egyptian not an Israeli. She also tells of American feminists not taking her seriously because she is a Moslem. As a result of her own experiences, she was very careful not to offend sensibilities particularly in the West. This is a truly wonderful, sensitive, insightful, lyrical and brave book.
Rating:
Summary: Insight : history, family, feminism, religion, and more ....
Review: A Border Passage is not a typical autobiography. It has many elements of an autobiography, but it is also a book of well reasoned essays on some of the most difficult aspects of the history of Egypt and its culture. Essays on Islam, imperialism and on the identity and language of Egypt Leila Ahmed recount of her childhood and upbringing in Cairo and Alexandria is beautifully written. Her complex relationship with and her views of her mother are an important theme in the first half of the book. Her analysis of the social impact of the colonial and post colonial on her own family and the events that surrounded her is particularly insightful. In writing this book Leila Ahmed clearly has done a considerable amount of sole searching with objective detachment. She describes that process and articulates clearly her reasoning. You can actually sense the struggle and pain she went through to reach a particular conclusion. This is the work of a sensitive person with a superb analytical mind and an ability to reflect. I particularly enjoyed her pointing out of what was a recollection and knowledge in retrospect, in her process of understanding an issue or an emotion. The book contains a very well researched and argued section on the "Arabization" of Egypt. Here, she presents why she is not an Arab, but rather an Egyptian, from a historical, cultural, linguistic and social viewpoint. She illustrates with significant historical substantiation Arabism in Egypt as a colonial invention. Yet, she appears to be willing to accept an Arab identity as well as an Egyptian one in the west, because of what she shares with Arabs in the west. She talks of two "Arabnesses", I think I understood her correctly, but I am not sure. If you are interested in the subject you will find this part very rewarding, and if you couldn't care less, it will still be fascinating. It is her search for an identity, and her willingness to accept an additional identity in the west so as not to see herself escaping, in vain, the negative connotations that she has dedicated her life to fight. A Border Passage is remarkable in its political correctness. This, largely, comes across as natural political correctness, not forced or contrived. It comes across from Leila Ahmed's own suffering from racial, religious and gender discrimination. She tells of stories of a teacher giving her no grades, because he couldn't believe an Egyptian could do in English what she did. She tells of man a spitting in her face in England once he found out she is Egyptian not an Israeli. She also tells of American feminists not taking her seriously because she is a Moslem. As a result of her own experiences, she was very careful not to offend sensibilities particularly in the West. This is a truly wonderful, sensitive, insightful, lyrical and brave book.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply insightful woman's journey between cultures
Review: A courageous trip in search of identity of a woman's inter and intracultural challenges. Growing up in an affluent Egyptian family where the British and European culture was "fashionable", she was confronted by the changes of the revolution, political turmoil and nationalism and its confrontation to the European imperialism. Leila Ahmed is courageously and insightfully analysing changes that influenced a whole generation and challenged her to search for answers. She travels in time from Egypt to England and finally as an immigrant in the US. She objectively and sensitively tries to unwind the entangled conflicts of politics, religion, and culture, through her personal experiences. As an Egyptian immigrant woman, although from a different generation, I have learned from this book about the modern history of Egypt and identified with some of her experiences as well. This is an eloquently written book and a fascinating journey!
Rating:
Summary: Deeply insightful woman's journey between cultures
Review: A courageous trip in search of identity of a woman's inter and intracultural challenges. Growing up in an affluent Egyptian family where the British and European culture was "fashionable", she was confronted by the changes of the revolution, political turmoil and nationalism and its confrontation to the European imperialism. Leila Ahmed is courageously and insightfully analysing changes that influenced a whole generation and challenged her to search for answers. She travels in time from Egypt to England and finally as an immigrant in the US. She objectively and sensitively tries to unwind the entangled conflicts of politics, religion, and culture, through her personal experiences. As an Egyptian immigrant woman, although from a different generation, I have learned from this book about the modern history of Egypt and identified with some of her experiences as well. This is an eloquently written book and a fascinating journey!
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and Beautiful
Review: A lyrical autobiography of several passages from her own
childhood to adulthood, passages to other countries and
passages within Egypt's history. Dr Ahmed's book provided
a revelation regarding the Islam of men, something we've
recently learned to fear, and the Islam of women, something
that as a Christian I could wrap my arms around. Her
discussion about the beauty of an aural tradition and how
the human voice breaths life into the words by adding vowels
was worth re-reading several times. I am not only recommending
this book to friends who simply love to read a good book
but to a study group that is looking for sources of
information on what it means to be Muslim.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling and Beautiful
Review: A lyrical autobiography of several passages from her own
childhood to adulthood, passages to other countries and
passages within Egypt's history. Dr Ahmed's book provided
a revelation regarding the Islam of men, something we've
recently learned to fear, and the Islam of women, something
that as a Christian I could wrap my arms around. Her
discussion about the beauty of an aural tradition and how
the human voice breaths life into the words by adding vowels
was worth re-reading several times. I am not only recommending
this book to friends who simply love to read a good book
but to a study group that is looking for sources of
information on what it means to be Muslim.
Rating:
Summary: Lyrical. Reflective. Beautiful. That's just the half of it
Review: A very intimate autobiography because it's not an autobiography at all, it's about 'border passages' -- from child to adulthood, women's communities to patriarchal ones, citizenship to immigrant, and has stirred in me a strong desire to learn more about Islam. It blew a lot of my misconceptions out of the water, but in an incidental fashion: not, "You all think Muslim women are like this, you're wrong, here's the truth", but "when I was a child, I grew up this way, in a woman's community filled with the oral teachings of Islam, oral culture, oral tradition..." lots of wonderful and instructive reminisences about her family and culture and growing up in Egypt during the time that Nassar came to power, the era when the word "Arab" was redefined, and the impact of her parents, her immediate family, and their beliefs on the sum and substance of her own life. In the course of this discussion is embedded a course on Egyptian history from the eyes of both a child, and the adult scholar who turned her attention to her own home and history. Ahmed's comments on coming to America at the height of '60s feminism', when white middle-class women where questioning fundamental tenets of their society, yet being discouraged from asking similar questions of her own society's tenets, a pressure many 'feminists of color' experienced, was of particular interest to me. I think there may be an interesting parallel between that experience and the pressure on Third Wave feminists by some older feminists to not stray from the path established by them in the 60s, to not ask our own questions. Ahmed's discussion of the impact of a literary emphasis on education in a culture that is predominately oral has caused me to question my own rigid assumption that if "it isn't written down, it didn't happen". She makes a fascinating point about patriarchal ideas of Islam being proliferated by 'Western' educational systems that assign more credence to the written word than the oral tradition. The story of Islam that is distributed to the world, is that of a bunch of dead misogynists, not the living religion. I find this fascinating, having had more exposure to Christianity than any other religion, which is a faith that is based on its literature -- though the faith is studied and transmitted orally by a minister to a flock, it is still based on the written word, and the faithful are expected to read that word. An oral Islam, a women's Islam, contemplated, discussed, refined, educated in women's communities, very seperate from the written Islam, the men's Islam, is a religious division I had never considered. It's excited me to learn more about this Islam. In sum, A Border Passage covers a great deal of ground, in an intimate, contemplative fashion: social (life in Egypt, England, the United Arab Emirates, and the USA), psychological (her parents, her moral and religious education, and passage into adulthood), and political (Arab nationalism, colonialism, post-colonialism, race in England, race and feminism in America ), all wrapped up in fundamental discussions of self-identity. Worth every moment spent reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Jane Obelesk
Review: Compared to Edward Said's memoir "Out of Place" this is a stunning accomplishment. Instead of new lies being offered to wash away old, unexplaned lies, Ahmed offers rare insight into her childhood. Also, as a woman I found the book of special interest as the author tells readers, in a most believable manner, about the particular problems of a woman in Egypt. I give this memoir my highest rating--five stars.
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