Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Kabul Beauty School
Kabul Beauty School: an American woman goes behind the veil by Deborah Rodriguez 2007
Kabul Beauty School: an American woman goes behind the veil by Deborah Rodriguez chronicles her efforts to establish Afghanistan's first modern beauty school and training salon.
Rodriguez went to Kabul in 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban, volunteering with a small nongovernmental organization, but soon found that her skills as a trained hairdresser were far more in demand, at first with Western workers and then, as word got out, Afghans. In a city with no mail service, she went door-to-door to recruit students from clandestine beauty shops.She had to convince Afghan men to work side by side with her to unpack cartons of supplies donated from the U.S. The students she befriends, however, are the heroines of this memoir. Women who were denied education and seldom allowed to leave their homes found they were able to support themselves and their families. The author is still in Kabul, married to an Afghan businessman, and is now director of the school and owner of the Oasis Salon and Kabul Coffee House and Cafe.
This is a witty and insightful memoir that I thoroughly enjoyed. It renewed and reinforced how fortunate I am, as a woman, to have the freedom that I have in this country.
Rodriguez went to Kabul in 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban, volunteering with a small nongovernmental organization, but soon found that her skills as a trained hairdresser were far more in demand, at first with Western workers and then, as word got out, Afghans. In a city with no mail service, she went door-to-door to recruit students from clandestine beauty shops.She had to convince Afghan men to work side by side with her to unpack cartons of supplies donated from the U.S. The students she befriends, however, are the heroines of this memoir. Women who were denied education and seldom allowed to leave their homes found they were able to support themselves and their families. The author is still in Kabul, married to an Afghan businessman, and is now director of the school and owner of the Oasis Salon and Kabul Coffee House and Cafe.
This is a witty and insightful memoir that I thoroughly enjoyed. It renewed and reinforced how fortunate I am, as a woman, to have the freedom that I have in this country.
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