amazon.co.uk:
A lively narrative of the author's experiences reacquainting Afghan women with skills the mullahs had denied them.Michigan-born Rodriguez arrived in Kabul in May 2002 with the Care for All Foundation, a Christian humanitarian organization. She'd had emergency and disaster-relief training, but as soon as her group leader mentioned at a meeting that she was a hairdresser, she was mobbed by foreign-aid workers desperate for a decent haircut. The Taliban had banned beauty parlors, and the ones that had opened since its fall suffered from years of inactivity. When her young protegee Roshanna took her to a secret salon in Kabul, Rodriguez was shocked by the meager supplies and the staff's rudimentary skills. She embarked on a mission to start a beauty school in Kabul. She worked on getting product donations from hair-care companies like Paul Mitchell. She enlisted help from Mary MacMakin, the American head of a nonprofit organization geared toward helping Afghan widows. Living on and off in Kabul, Rodriguez found a suitable building and opened her school to about 30 students, whose hard-luck stories fill these pages. Often uneducated, married in their teens, locked away to languish at home or beaten into submission, these women were eager to gain self-sufficiency and self-worth. The vast cultural gap between them and their teacher could make instruction difficult. Struggling to explain that sometimes when coloring hair, the beautician had to neutralize an underlying pigment to get the desired shade, for example, Rodriguez just wasn't getting through until she had the inspiration to declare, "Think of it as Satan! It's this evil thing in the hair that you have to fight." She became so comfortable in her new country that she agreed to an arranged marriage with an enlightened Afghan businessman. Today, she writes, "I've been renewed by the spirit of this place and roused by its challenges."Terrifically readable, and rich in personal stories. (Kirkus Reviews)

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

BC miitti in Kerttu Wednesday 11th March 2009, 6 pm local time.

Thank you Sobergirl, this just happens to be on my wishlist, so I had to take it. :)

It was also great to see you again.

This was an unusual story about a woman who wanted to help and make a difference. I enjoyed reading it during my mini-holiday in Pärnu, Estonia.

I must admit I wouldnt be able to live the way Debbie did, her marriage sounds really difficult so I admire her for staying in it. This book taught me a lot about Afghanistan too.

The next reader will be in Germany. Enjoy!

The book arrived savely. Thank you for the RABCK! :)
I've seen a documentary about this project in Kabul and now I'm curious to read about it.

I liked the book a lot. Thank you again for the RABCK! Actually I wished, that I could have known even more about the students. I'm wondering about what Robinna and her sisters are doing. I also hope that the school works again.
I'm happy that there are women like Deborah Rodriguez that help people in such troubled countries. I also think that it is very important to educate the women and children, because that are the ones that will be able to make a change.
Unfortunately the situation in Afghanistan hasn't really become better :(

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

The book continues its journey.

I received this through the European Pay-it-forward Bookrelay.
Thanks a lot for offering it, Pitak!

Deborah Rodriguez is certainly not a gifted writer (the book was co-written by writer Kristin Ohlson) and her technique of jumping right into a dangerous new situation and only then explaining how it came about and what happened next gets rather repetitive after a while.
Still, the style is fluent, it never stretches, sometimes it’s quite a page-turner. I first appreciated her openness. She easily admits mistakes and setbacks instead of boasting and bragging about her good deeds (unlike for example John Wood and his NGO in Nepal etc …), giving us lots of insights into Afghan women's lives, she questions herself and all those people trying to help Afghan women, even writes about “wrongheaded attempts to help Afghan women” – I wonder whether this book is another example. She has endangered the women and girls she writes about immensely. Even though the book is not sold in Afghanistan, things leak. She wrote about faking a girl’s virginity after all, giving her another name might not be enough to protect her identity. What was she thinking when she wrote about this? But probably it isn’t even true … after some research on the web I came across reports accusing her of inconsistencies and motives of personal gain, for example http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/fashion/29kabul.html
Anyway, those women can’t just leave the country as easily as she did when things got tight.
What intrigued me: After living for three years in Afghanistan – and not in some expat ghetto, but in daily contact with Afghans – I would have expected her to make more of an effort to learn Dari, language is an important gate to another culture after all. (Assimilation isn’t one of her strong points.)
And marrying one of General Dostums’s mujahideen fighters (married on top of it) … Dostum is infamous for his switching of allegiances and for his brutality and human rights violations. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-462460/Kabul-beauty-school-dropout.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10634299
Article on Wikipedia
I'm glad I didn't have to spend money buying this book, would have regreted doing so.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

One of Dancesports' selections from the South Asian VBB.
Travelling to Australia now.
(By surface mail, might take a few weeks.)

Book arrived today - it was quite a quick trip for surface mail especially with the Easter break included. I'm adding to the pile - but it looks a quick read - so it might not be too long before I get to this one.

Well it did take me longer than I expected to get to this book. But once I did I found it a quick read which I liked. I too am wondering about the fate of some of the Afghan women who featured in the story. Also wondering how much is fact or fiction - but nevertheless I enjoyed the read. I see there is another book out now - in Australia it is called 'The little coffee shop of Kabul'. Book is moving on very soon.

I added this book to the global village vbb last year. But I didn't realise that it had been chosen until very recently. The pm in September went astray. Anyway I was very glad that it was chosen because it pushed it up my tbr pile when I realised you had been waiting so long. I hope you enjoy the book which I found quite a quick read.

Received today with MANY THANKS!

update of June 23rd:
I have really enjoyed reading this book. It was shocking and sad at times but always interesting and sometimes I had to laugh out loud. I am sorry about the end of the beauty school though and I think that Debbie never returned you Afghanistan. I am wondering what happened to the girls she left behind there.

The book has been chosen by VictoriaWagtail via the "Global Village VBB" so will travel on to Sweden now. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

Thanks Into-the-Blue for sending me this book! :)

Left on the Bookcrossing-shelf

Are you new to Bookcrossing? Nice! And thank you for taking your time to register this book here. I promise you won't regret finding Bookcrossing! It's a worldwide community for booklovers based on the wish to share books. You can join by signing up for an account (it's free of charge and spam and you can be completely anonymous). If you have further questions or want to discover more of what Bookcrossing is all about, visit the forums. Try for example The newbie-forum or the bookring-forum.

Happy reading and happy crossing!

I picked this up at Espresso House, to be used for a mass release in the Old Town later this summer!

Released together with nine other books somewhere in The old town

Some friends of mine were in Stockholm for the day whilst on a trip off a travel cruise and picked this book up where it had been wild released. Meanwhile I was back home feeding their cats.
They are going to pass it to me after reading it. What a good travel history this book has got.
Hurrah for Bookcrossing.

I was about to wild release this book then I realised what a good Bookcrossing history it has got over the last 10 years and decided not to spoil that. I will take it instead to the Gold Coast World Convention in April. I didn't read it myself but it has been lent to a friend whilst it was with me and she enjoyed it. I just have too many books...……….