From Publishers Weekly
Now 23, Zoya was a child during the Russian invasion and a teen when the Taliban took power. The daughter of activists in Kabul, Zoya was raised by her grandmother after her parents disappeared. She now belongs to RAWA (see the review of Veiled Courage, above), a group her mother belonged to. Her reflections show the complex scars made by the tug of war between factional governments and tribal warlords, especially the effects of the Taliban. Many of Zoya's stories (e.g., women only permitted to leave their homes wearing a burqa and accompanied by a male; women often suffering and dying for want of a female physician) are covered in Latifa's My Forbidden Face. Zoya tells of a society where kite flying, bright colors and even women's laughter is forbidden, and enforcers are often armed with Russian military leftovers or crude stones. Yet the Afghans Zoya speaks of remain rebellious and hopeful. She writes, "When I... saw Kabul in the daylight, even the mountains beyond the city which had seemed so peaceful to me when I was a child looked sad. But... that I had seen them again... made me feel stronger." Assigned by RAWA to live and work in a refugee camp near the Afghan-Pakistani border, Zoya now also travels abroad to raise funds for her organization. Her narrative voice is quiet and clear, making her recollections of the breathtaking violence she has witnessed nail-bitingly vivid and her descriptions of her struggle candid and poignant.
From AudioFile
Zoya committed her life to the cause of women's rights in Afghanistan at 14, when both parents were assassinated for political activities. Her life story is provocative; Zoya's position is predictably anti-Taliban, yet subtly anti-American. The reader's Afghani pronunciations sound rich and authentic, but comprehensible. Her vocal characterizations vividly paint Afghani widows exhausted by a lifetime of cruelty, as well as idealistic young women energized by revolutionary ideas of democracy. The reader's crisp voice doesn't succumb to undue sentimentality or political posturing. Unfortunately, the epilogue interview with Zoya is of poor technical quality, but it creates an image of her huddled in a safehouse, seeking both refuge and publicity for the cause. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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