The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe Book Review

Despite the limitations placed on women, we are remarkably resourceful. When life hands us lemons, we find a way to make lemonade.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe was published in 2012. Written by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, it is the story of Kamila Sidiqi. Born in Kabul to a progressive family who equally valued their sons and their daughters, Sidiqi received her teaching certificate just before the first Taliban invasion of Afghanistan in 1996.

Stripped of her rights and her humanity, she had to find a way to survive and support her family. Despite the restrictive laws, Sidiqi and her sisters created a successful dressmaking business that kept many from the brink of poverty and starvation.

I loved this book. The strength, resourcefulness, and courage it took to take on this kind of enterprise with all of the boundaries in front of them astounded me. I wanted to cheer, I wanted to shout, and I want to make sure that the contributions these women made to global feminism are not forgotten.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe is available wherever books are sold.

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An American Bride In Kabul Book Review

Life is made up a variety of experiences. Sometimes these experiences take our lives into new directions previously not thought of.

In the early 1960’s, second wave feminist and author Phyllis Chesler was young and in love. Ms. Chesler was born into an Orthodox Jewish family from Brooklyn, New York. The man she fell in love with was the son of a devout Muslim family from Afghanistan.

Deciding to take a chance on love, she put aside her family and her ambitions to marry this man and live with him in his native country. Her experience is chronicle in her 2013 memoir, An American Bride In Kabul. When the plane landed in Kabul, her American passport was taken away from her. She was no longer an individual, but property that was part and parcel of her husband’s family.  The charming, educated, open minded man she fell in love was soon replaced by a traditional man who clung to the old traditions and expected his wife to do the same.

What I very much enjoyed about this book was that it opened my eyes to a world that I know really nothing of. Many of us who live in the West, unless we have visited countries like Afghanistan, truly have no understanding of what it is to live in that world.  One of the points that Ms. Chesler makes is that those of us in the West may pretend to understand what it is to live in Afghanistan and other countries in that region, but the truth is that we do not.

I highly recommend this book.