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The dressmaker of Khair Khana : five sisters, one remarkable family, and the woman who risked everything to keep them safe
Book
2011
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Fiction/Biography Profile
Genre
NonFiction
Sociology
Topics
Women's lives
Islamic women
Women-owned businesses
Dressmakers
Entrepreneurs
Family relationships
Siblings
Setting
Afghanistan - Asia
- Middle East
Time Period
-- 21st century
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Trade Reviews
Library Journal Review
Journalist Lemmon (deputy director, Women & Foreign Policy Prog., Council on Foreign Relations) tells the moving story of Kamila Sidiqi, a young woman in Kabul, Afghanistan, who, out of desperation, started a successful dressmaking business to support her family and other destitute women during the repressive Taliban regime. Lemmon encountered Kamila in 2005 when Lemmon was on assignment for the Financial Times. Through Kamila's story, Lemmon captures the lives of women after the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996. She rejects characterizing Afghan women as victims of war and instead demonstrates how women, particularly entrepreneurial women, actively resisted gender oppression. Kamila's story ends on a positive note with the fall of the Taliban regime after the American presence in Afghanistan; her impressive yet furtive enterprise later received recognition from such figures as Condoleezza Rice. Given the continued conflict in Afghanistan under foreign occupation, curious readers may want to know more about the current struggles of Afghan women. VERDICT A revealing work that contributes to the literature on women under Afghanistan's Taliban regime.-Karen Okamoto, John Jay Coll. Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
In 2005, Lemmon went to Afghanistan on assignment for the Financial Times to write about women entrepreneurs. When she met a dressmaker named Kamila Sediqi, Lemmon (once a producer for This Week with George Stephanopolos) knew she had her story. It's an exciting, engrossing one that reads like a novel, complete with moments of tension and triumph, plus well-researched detail on daily life in Kabul under Taliban rule. When that regime descended in 1996, it brought fear, violence, and restrictions: women must stay home, may not work, and must wear the chadri-a cloak, also known as a burqa, that covers the face and body-in public. After Sediqi's parents left the city to avoid being pressed into service, or worse, by the Taliban, it fell to her to support the family. Her story is at once familiar (she came up with an idea, procured clients, hired student workers, and learned as she went) and wholly different (she couldn't go anywhere without a male escort, had to use an assumed name with customers due to the threat of being found out and punished, and could fit in work on the sewing machine only when there was electricity). It's a fascinating story that touches on family, gender, business, and politics and offers inspiration through the resourceful, determined woman at its heart. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Most books that cover women's lives in Afghanistan under the Taliban recount suffering and loss, but journalist Lemmon wanted to shed light on the untold stories of enterprising women who found ways to take care of themselves and their families during the five oppressive years the Taliban was in power. Kamila Sidiqi's hopes of using her teaching degree were dashed when the Taliban overtook Kabul and its suburbs. As the oldest unmarried daughter, Kamila knew it was up to her to find a way to provide for her family. Realizing women still need clothing to wear under their chadris, Kamila asked her older sister to teach her and her younger sisters to sew. With her younger brother in tow, Kamila approached local merchants and found buyers for the clothing she and her sisters made, until she found herself with a plethora of orders and a number of neighborhood women who wanted to take part in the business. An inspiring, uplifting story about one woman's extraordinary courage and ingenuity in the face of adversity.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist
Summary

"We're far more accustomed to--and comfortable with--seeing women portrayed as victims of war who deserve our sympathy rather than as resilient survivors who demand our respect..."

Former ABC journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells the riveting true story of Kamila Sidiqi and other women of Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban's fearful rise to power. In what Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, calls "one of the most inspiring books I have ever read," Lemmon recounts with novelistic vividness the true story of a fearless young woman who not only reinvented herself as an entrepreneur to save her family but, in the face of ferocious opposition, brought hope to the lives of dozens of women in war-torn Kabul.

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