Customer Reviews

However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This sweet memoir of a girl's soccer team in Afghanistan manages to touch on many of the tougher issues facing citizens, and women in particular, in Afghanistan. The tone is light as the narrator describes a small set of teenage girls learning to pass, dribble, and cooperate on the playing field; but there are harsher moments, too, which the narrator incorporates without unnecessary drama. Soccer is considered a boy's sport in Afghanistan, so the formation of a team - and eventually a league - was frequently controversial.

Part of the story is about the intensive, six-week long training camp organized for the team of novice players in the US. The narrator describes their impressions of America and their increasing self-confidence on the field. They don't win many games, but they gain skills and expertise that make them the finest female soccer players in Afghanistan by the time they return home.

Spliced in with the narrator's account of the training camp are the stories of individual girls in the year following their trip. Most of these personal accounts are bittersweet - one of the girls goes into a severe depression because she misses the excitement and variety of her trip, and has a hard time pulling out of it. One girl betrays the others, and joins another team - her new coach wants her to invite all the girls who trained in America, but she doesn't. She wants the glory for herself. One faces extreme disapproval from her family, who don't have a problem with a girl playing soccer so much as they refuse her the right to her own pleasures, goals, or accomplishments - the head of the family, her older brother, tells her, "It is enough that you are going to school...That's all for you."

In the last third of the memoir, the narrator visits Afghanistan and tries to give a broader perspective on the role of sports, and women's team sports, in the country. She interviews a politician who won a spot in parliament, but whose only previous experience was on the national basketball team. She talks to the men who organize national sport's leagues in Afghanistan, and probes the reasons why they choose - or don't choose - to sponser women's teams. She argues that being able to play a sport, and in particular a men's sport, builds the pride and self-confidence that she thinks is key to righting women's place in Afghanistan and an important part of building a peaceful country.

HOWEVER TALL THE MOUNTAIN is short and airy, more like an hors d'oeuvre than a main course. I felt pretty neutral about it on the whole, often charmed but never riveted or deeply engaged.

This review is difficult to write. I really want to like this book. I really like the story behind the book. However, the book is not well-written. Some of the book is written in the present-tense, and other parts in the past-tense. The timeline is hard to discern, and what should have been the climax was the very first story in the book. There wasn't a clear narrative, unfortunately. Also, the writing was very amateur. Overall, the book deserves a much better editor, perhaps even a ghost writer to assist in tying all the disparate pieces together into a cohesive story. A professional writer could have made characters of these girls, engaging the reader. I have just read the book and I can hardly imagine what each girl looks like or tell you the difference between one and another. That is how the stories began to blend together.

The stories about the girls on the team jump all over the place. First, the story of the girls playing in America is told. Then, for each girl on the team, the stories of their lives before, during and after the American trip is told. The author's own reminisces are interspersed. Finally, the book ends with some of the author's interviews with sportspeople of Afghanistan who have had an influence on women's sports. I was confused by the constant jumping in time, from 2005 back to 2004 to 2006. It was unclear to me what the intention of the book was - it was neither clearly a true story told in narrative form, or a non-fiction book told in topical chapter form.

I didn't want to give it a bad review because the story it tells _is_ really interesting if you can get past these flaws. No, I wasn't glued to the book but it WAS inspirational to read about the advancements in women's sports and how it is changing these young girls.

Imagine if you will, that you are a female living in a war torn country. You are essentially denied any freedom because of your gender. You cannot play sports or go to school. You can't watch TV or listen to music. You are not even able to leave the house without a male relative escorting you. In short, you are totally oppressed. This is what life under the Taliban was like for girls and women in Afghanistan.

After over 30 years of Taliban rule, Afghanistan is slowly crawling out from under the oppressive thumb of the religious fundamentalism that they were forced under in the late 70's. In this book we see how social views have been clouded by Taliban rule to such a degree that it is still hard for Afghan women to go out and make a mark for themselves.

Awista Ayub's However Tall the Mountain, is the story of eight young girls and their stories of life in Afghanistan. It is also her story. As an Afghan refugee who was smuggled out of the country as a toddler and raised in America. It was her vision that led to the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange (AYSF) and allowed soccer to be introduced into the lives of these eight Afghan girls.

Afghan girls and women are now allowed to be educated and play sports as they did before Taliban rule, but much of the freedom they had before this, is still not totally within their grasp. In this book, we see how the young girls who are now playing soccer and making a name for themselves still face adversity. They are taunted by boys and men for playing a "man's game", soccer, but these remarkable young women press on and persevere as they lead the way for other young girls to do the same.

This is also the homecoming story of Awista Ayub. Separated from her homeland as a toddler, she was raised in America. Because of the AYSE, she returned to her homeland for an extended visit and began to rediscover her native country.

This is an inspiring story that will open your eyes and make you appreciate the freedoms that we American often take for granted.

This is a wonderful story that is let down by not so wonderful writing. While the story is better the average, the writing is less than average. Really, this book could have used some help in the writing. It just isn't written well, which is too bad, because the story is worth telling. But it isn't very enjoyable reading because it just isn't written well.

This is not really about soccer. Sports fanatics will be a bit disappointed. I think, however, that most will be touched by the story of 8 girls learning to live again after the Taliban rule. In 2004, Awista, the authoress, sponsored these young Afghan women to come and learn soccer in the States. Tho Awista wrote the book, there is very little about her. Rather, she tells the story of the Afghan girls and their lives before and after the Taliban. We feel sad when their brothers are arrested, angry when they walk the streets and get jeered at for wearing jeans, sympathy when the Taliban bans them from getting an education, and fear when the Taliban knocks on their doors at night because they hear a television. When the Taliban is overthrown in 2001, readers witness the country's slow recovery thru the girls' eyes.

In a world in which it is only deemed acceptable for women to play either basketball or volleyball, these girls are trailblazers. Their training in the States teaches them to work as a team and that disputes among themselves do not have to be settled with violence. Having never known a world without violence or where everything isn't answered with violence, it was interesting watching them mature throughout the story.

The girls that left Afghanistan to learn soccer were frightened and crying. The girls that returned were ready to take on the world and empower other young women to do the same.

I really liked this book and the only thing holding it back from 5 stars is it was very short. It appeared longer because of blank pages and very large spacing and tabs. The timeline was a bit off too. They don't meet their coach Ali till halfway thru the book as they readying for the Children's Games, but he was coaching them at the beginning for the Fourth of July games.. Little disrepancies. The author apologizes for this in the Author's note tho. I read an ARC also.. It may be changed before publication.

Good book and thumbs up to Awista Ayub.

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but after reading the previous two reviews I was expecting a story filled with horror, drama and hardship. This was, afterall, a story about girls playing soccer in Afghanistan.

The horror was there in the background whenever the Taliban was mentioned, but unlike the previous reviewers, the hardship in this story was not the Taliban, but Afghan society and their views of women or girls playing soccer. In Afghanistan girls and women play basketball or volleyball, not soccer. That's strictly a boys' and man's sport. The author and several supporters tried hard to recruit interested girls and supportive parents. (Most girls came from privileged backgrounds) Many pages were spent describing the heartache and frustration of getting a team organized, breaking glass ceilings, and finding sponsors.

Another hardship was training young teen girls who all their lives knew nothing but war, indiscriminate killings and discriminations. Tempers flew, patience was tried and broken. Getting war-torn girls to get together and get along was another battle to overcome. (Once their confidence was solidified, the team aura went better)

Most of the story describes training in either Afghanistan or the USA, organzing an official team and playing a great finale that ends with a happy end. But somehow it all just seems flat, and at times boring to the point that I wanted to put the book down because the climax of the plot wasn't developing. I almost gave this review three stars if it weren't for the overall subject, a subject that by itself should draw intereste, sympathy and passion.

But somehow, that just wasn't there in this well-intended book. One does want to cheer the author for her determination, the girls for their courage, and all the supporters for their strong will.

There are some details left out of this story to protect the real people described in this book, but these details also give the writing a bit of a choppiness to it. Paragraphs are separated into several small essays that don't always blend into one another, and sometimes, such as mentioning the author's experience of 11 September 2001 toward the end of the book, seemed quite out of place with the rhythm of the read because the majority of the story takes place in 2004-2005.

Not enough details were given of each girl, perhaps to protect the family, but I found the characters a little two-dimentional, like hand puppets being lead across a stage.

The fonts used in this print are also smaller than usual, the first thing I noticed when I opened this book.

This is a terrific book with insights into what it's like to live in war torn Afghanistan. It is also about how a girl's sense of self can improve through team sports.

Very inspiring and touching! We have little to complain of here in the US. Kudos to the author and those who helped her to put together the soccer club.

Beautiful story that really brought home how very different the culture of Afghanistan and very different they think...i dont think it was so much about soccer as about bonding among girls and gaining another perspective.I don't know if the athletic program the book describes really changed anything-one of the girls was ordered by her brother not to play ball any longer, just beaue he could. But the book is beautifully and lyrically, and even lovingly written and quite bittersweet. I feel more empathy for the women and girls of that countrynthan i ever have.

Like other reviewers, I wanted to like this book. I like reading about girls' sports teams. I was intrigued by the notion of a team from Aghanistan, especially now. So I dug into the book as soon as I got it, months ago.

Unfortunately, this book was difficult to read. I would pick it up and then just not get involved. Then I would try again with the same result. Mostly, I had trouble following the chronology and telling the girls apart. Their stories were heart-breaking but we didn't get enough detail to feel involved. The author also entered the story, bringing her own background.

What's frustrating here is that we have a story but not a storyteller. This topic calls for someone with journalism or other types of writing background. I feel sad as I write this comment, as I liked the concept and the author.

A much better book is Outcasts United, by Warren St John, about a soccer team composed of immigrants.