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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insight : history, family, feminism, religion, and more ...., June 5, 2000
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.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical. Reflective. Beautiful. That's just the half of it, September 1, 1999
By A Customer
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.
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truely worthwhile book to read, October 15, 1999
By A Customer
In this book Dr. Leila Ahmed present an intriguing account of various phases of her life beginning with her childhood in Cairo to her journey to the United States. As an immigrant faculty myself, I can sense her story sincerely. The story which comes from her heart and, will certainly, resides in the hearts of the readers. Although the book is designed as an autobiography, she masterfully analyses the critical social and religious issues and incorporates them immaculately into the main story. Especially, her outright distinction between the "oral" Islam, practiced and passed on to her by the women around her, and the "official", textual, man-made, Islam is indeed creative. I believe Dr. Ahmed has earmarked on an important mission of repairing the prevailing militant view of Islam in the west by unveiling the face of a true, pacifist, Islam. I love this book. It tells a story of a woman withstanding constant challenges in her life, her journey across different cultures in search of indentiy and a place in this world, the story of simplicity and real values, and the story of honesty and integrity. The breadth of knowledge demonstrated by the author and her command of the English language, as a non-native speaker, are quite extraordinary.
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