Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq [Paperback]

Riverbend (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2005 | ISBN-10: 1558614893 | ISBN-13: 978-1558614895

In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events.

In a voice in turn eloquent, angry, reflective and darkly comic, Riverbend recounts stories of life in an occupied city—of neighbors whose homes are raided by US troops, whose relatives disappear into prisons and whose children are kidnapped by money-hungry militias. At times, the tragic blends into the absurd, as she tells of her family jumping out of bed to wash clothes and send e-mails in the middle of the night when the electricity is briefly restored, or of their quest to bury an elderly aunt when the mosques are all overbooked for wakes and the cemeteries are all full. The only Iraqi blogger writing from a woman’s perspective, she also describes a once-secular city where women are now afraid to leave their homes without head covering and a male escort.

Interspersed with these vivid snapshots from daily life are Riverbend’s analyses of everything from the elusive workings of the Iraqi Governing Council to the torture in Abu Ghraib, from the coverage provided by American media and by Al-Jazeera to Bush’s State of the Union speech. Here again, she focuses especially on the fate of women, whose rights and freedoms have fallen victim to rising fundamentalisms in a chaotic postwar society.

With thousands of loyal readers worldwide, the Riverbend blog is widely recognized around the world as a crucial source of information not available through the mainstream media. The book version of this blog will have “value-added” features: an introduction and timeline of events by veteran journalist James Ridgeway, excerpts from Riverbend’s links and an epilogue by Riverbend herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Iraqi women's voices have been virtually silent since the fall of Baghdad. Yet four months after Saddam's statue toppled in April 2003, the pseudonymous Riverbend, a Baghdad native then 24 years old, began blogging about life in the city in dryly idiomatic English and garnered an instant following that rivals Salam Pax's Where Is Raed? This year's worth of Riverbend's commentary--passionate, frustrated, sarcastic and sometimes hopeful--runs to September 2004. Before the war, Riverbend was a computer programmer ("yes, yes... a geek"), living with her parents and brother in relative affluence; as she chronicles the privations her family experiences under occupation, there is a good deal of "complaining and ranting" about erratic electricity, intermittent water supplies, near daily explosions, gas shortages and travel restrictions. She rails against the interim governing council ("the puppet government") and Bush and his administration--and is sardonic on Islamic fundamentalism: as Al Sadr and his followers begin to emerge, Riverbend quotes the Carpenters's "We've Only Just Begun." But Riverbend is most compelling when she gives cultural object lessons on everything from the changing status of Iraqi women to Ramadan, the Iraqi educational system, the significance of date palms and the details of mourning rituals. Just as fascinating are the mundane facts of daily life, like her unsuccessful attempt to go back to work--no one would guarantee the safety of a woman in the workplace. The blog continues at riverbendblog.blogspot.com; like this book, it offers quick takes on events as they occur, from a perspective too often overlooked, ignored or suppressed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Riverbend is the pseudonym of a young Iraqi blogger; this book archives the first year of her blog, Baghdad Burning. Once a computer programmer who enjoyed considerable personal freedom, after Baghdad's fall, Riverbend finds herself unemployed and largely restricted to the safety of her family's home. In English that would put many Americans to shame, she chronicles daily life under the occupation, writing about water and electricity shortages with humor and exasperation, writing about violence with deep feeling. She also explains more complicated topics, painting a surprising picture of prewar harmony between religious groups (she herself lives in a mixed Sunni and Shiite household). Riverbend's take on politics is so perceptive that readers may wonder if she is actually a Beltway antiwar activist--although such readers should also question their assumption that an Iraqi couldn't write this well or be so well informed. But the greatest accomplishment of this intriguing book lies in its essential ordinariness. Riverbend is bright and opinionated, true, but like all voices of dissent worth remembering, she provides an urgent reminder that, whichever governments we struggle under, we are all the same. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (April 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558614893
• ISBN-13: 978-1558614895
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

121 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Iraq's Anne Frank?, April 18, 2005

By 

David Dix (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq (Paperback)

First, this book is NOT written by James Ridgeway. He just wrote a short introduction to the book. Amazon should change its copy to reflect that Riverbend is the author of this collection of blog entries.

Riverbend is a woman in her mid-twenties living in the hell that is Baghdad. Her blog "Baghdad Burning" is an example of how vital the blogging phenomenon can be. She gives us, in "real time", a deeply intimate view of what is actually happening to the people of Iraq by describing what she and her family members are going through.

Her entries are sometimes funny, often angry, always compassionate. She is well educated and well read, knows a great deal about American culture and is ferociously honest.

Her entries are not ideological, like those of many other Iraqi bloggers. She speaks from her heart, not her politics.

Writing is writing, but great writing is rare and deserves to be honored. We are not a time, yet, when the literature of the Internet can be respected as equal to that in print. But, if there ever is a Nobel Prize for Internet Literature, Riverbend should be its first recipient. She is the equal to any essayist writing today. Even when angry, she writes with a delicacy, with true elegance that no other writer I know can match.

Each day, thousands of people around the world view her blog. Many days we are disappointed she has not made an entry. That is not because we love her writing and have learned so much from her expression of her point of view; we all open her page just to make sure she is still alive, that she has not been shot or bombed, or raped or subjected to any more suffering than she and her family have already experienced. She is a person many of us love deeply and want so much for her to survive and flourish.

I keep this book next to my computer. I pick it up occassionally and open it some random page. I learn from her, laugh with her, feel her agony at what has been done to her country, her people. This book is wonderful. It will become a classic. And it will stand as part of a body of great literature all of us who consider her a friend know she will someday write.

74 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cuts through the B.S. of corporate news, June 7, 2005

By 

L.A. in CA - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq (Paperback)

Hands down, this is one of the best books yet to bring home the reality of what this illegal occupation is doing to Iraq and her people. Writing from her home in Baghdad, Riverbend invites us into her home, introduces us to her family and neighbors, and allows us to tag along with her as she goes about her life.

This book is a compilation of her blog entries for part of 2003 and 2004. Because her thoughts and observations are written down daily - or as often as electricity allows - her writing is fresh and honest and we are allowed to share her hopes, fears and anger in a very personal way.

A talented writer, she is armed with a wealth of facts and statistics regarding culture, politics and religion in the area. She also shares many of the tragic stories of innocent Iraqis trying to cope with unbearable circumstances. It's enough to break your heart.

If you are interested in delving further into life in Iraq, the author includes numerous links to websites and blogs of a similar nature.

47 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope out of Chaos, June 11, 2005

By 

M. A. Seigenthaler - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq (Paperback)

Internet users, myself included, have been following Riverbend's blog for a few years now and I can barely express how thrilled I am that it has finally been published. With any luck, the remainder will be published and her full story will be told. This is the most believable account of day-to-day life in occupied Iraq that I have ever seen. Bagdhad Burning would be an excellent tool for teachers that want to bring the current situation abroad into a more complete context than we see in news coverage. High school age children will be drawn in by the experience of someone closer to their age (she was 24 when she started her blog), and will likely empathize with her struggles and her passion.

Thought there are several blogs maintained by Iraqi civilians, this one has a clear, compassionate voice and she seems much like any one of us. Her daily struggles to get by can be quite compelling, as she combats things like intermittent access to electricity and water. Her English is perfect. In fact, her English is better than many native speakers. She is highly intelligent and articulate. She will inform you and she will make you cry.

In order to make the war more acceptable, there are many who would like us to think of Iraqi civilians as less than human, that Muslims somehow value life less than the "rest of us". Riverbend makes it impossible to fall into that trap. Her voice is as clear and as present as your sister's, your neighbor's, your closest friend's. You will ache for her and pray for her family.

If you read this book and want to know what happens next, the blog is ongoing at http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/. She continues to update, roughly every two weeks, unless some major event comes sooner.