Recent reading
Jul. 5th, 2019 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaNitton kvinnor: berättelser om syriskt motstånd by Samar Yazbek (2019)
Original in Arabic; read in Swedish translation. Title means "Nineteen women: stories of Syrian resistance". The book is based on interviews with Syrian women who participated in the revolution, most of whom became refugees later. The women are very diverse in some senses: from many parts of Syria, from their early twenties to eighty-year-old women, of various ethnic groups and religious affiliations and political opinions. None are political Islamists though many are devout Muslims. Also, all of them are middle class, which the author also points out in her preface and says is because she herself is middle class and finds such women easier to interview (plus, more of them have been able to get away). She possibly plans to interview working class women later.
Anyway. This is a very interesting and engaging book. It does contain graphic descriptions of torture and mentions of rape, so be warned. Reading all the stories together, they tell a story of a revolution gone wrong, and how frustrated these women were by the increasing dominance of conservative Islamism (financed from abroad) and how it limited their lives and contributions to the revolution. Many of these women felt a strong obligation and duty to the poorer classes of society. Like, there's one who is all: I will stay here under war conditions and reform the school curriculum and teach women to read; this is the hill I am literally willing to die on. Wow.
The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds by Thomas Schmidinger (2019)
Let's just take the other Syria-related book I read here, even if I read other books in between (I am behind on booklogging…) This is written by a German scholar sympathetic to (but not uncritical of) the PKK/PYD, and focused on the invasion and occupation of Afrin by Turkey. The Turkish state is ethnically cleansing the region of Kurds, Yazidis and Alevis and is now settling it with Turkish-friendly refugees from other areas of Syria. Thus setting the area up for even more future conflict. /o\ At 150 pages, it's really more of an extended essay, but I am bad at reading/finding news and so this is exactly what I needed. Good introduction to the history and the various minorities of Syria, which gave me more understanding. Also there are short interviews with various people from Afrin.
Original in Arabic; read in Swedish translation. Title means "Nineteen women: stories of Syrian resistance". The book is based on interviews with Syrian women who participated in the revolution, most of whom became refugees later. The women are very diverse in some senses: from many parts of Syria, from their early twenties to eighty-year-old women, of various ethnic groups and religious affiliations and political opinions. None are political Islamists though many are devout Muslims. Also, all of them are middle class, which the author also points out in her preface and says is because she herself is middle class and finds such women easier to interview (plus, more of them have been able to get away). She possibly plans to interview working class women later.
Anyway. This is a very interesting and engaging book. It does contain graphic descriptions of torture and mentions of rape, so be warned. Reading all the stories together, they tell a story of a revolution gone wrong, and how frustrated these women were by the increasing dominance of conservative Islamism (financed from abroad) and how it limited their lives and contributions to the revolution. Many of these women felt a strong obligation and duty to the poorer classes of society. Like, there's one who is all: I will stay here under war conditions and reform the school curriculum and teach women to read; this is the hill I am literally willing to die on. Wow.
The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds by Thomas Schmidinger (2019)
Let's just take the other Syria-related book I read here, even if I read other books in between (I am behind on booklogging…) This is written by a German scholar sympathetic to (but not uncritical of) the PKK/PYD, and focused on the invasion and occupation of Afrin by Turkey. The Turkish state is ethnically cleansing the region of Kurds, Yazidis and Alevis and is now settling it with Turkish-friendly refugees from other areas of Syria. Thus setting the area up for even more future conflict. /o\ At 150 pages, it's really more of an extended essay, but I am bad at reading/finding news and so this is exactly what I needed. Good introduction to the history and the various minorities of Syria, which gave me more understanding. Also there are short interviews with various people from Afrin.
