Stephanie Jane recenzis Greater Freedom de Alya Mooro
Timely and thought-provoking
5 steloj
I hoped when I chose a review copy of The Greater Freedom from NetGalley that Alya Mooro's writing would be thought-provoking for me and that absolutely proved to be the case. I would happily put this book alongside We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik and My Past Is A Foreign Country by Zeba Talkhani as timely and essential reading for everyone who is seeking new ways to understand our social history and alternative directions for the future. Mooro explores in depth how Middle Eastern women are socially conditioned to have certain life expectations, and how those us from Western countries are conditioned to view Arabs, particularly Arab women. I appreciated Mooro's candid honesty in recounting episodes from her own life, divided as it was between Cairo and London, which allowed her to develop insights into both cultures.
The Greater Freedom is a strong blend of personal memoir, philosophy and …
I hoped when I chose a review copy of The Greater Freedom from NetGalley that Alya Mooro's writing would be thought-provoking for me and that absolutely proved to be the case. I would happily put this book alongside We Need New Stories by Nesrine Malik and My Past Is A Foreign Country by Zeba Talkhani as timely and essential reading for everyone who is seeking new ways to understand our social history and alternative directions for the future. Mooro explores in depth how Middle Eastern women are socially conditioned to have certain life expectations, and how those us from Western countries are conditioned to view Arabs, particularly Arab women. I appreciated Mooro's candid honesty in recounting episodes from her own life, divided as it was between Cairo and London, which allowed her to develop insights into both cultures.
The Greater Freedom is a strong blend of personal memoir, philosophy and social commentary. Mooro includes the words of dozens of other women as well as quotations from a dizzying array of written sources to illustrate and support her ideas. (This is one of those books whose bibliography added lots more reading suggestions to my TBR!) She writes from a perspective which is uniquely her own, however I enjoyed recognising elements of her strict childhood from my own experiences. As women, regardless of where we were born or raised, I agree that we all have a lot more in common than perhaps we have been led to believe and we need to build upon this shared bedrock to support each other achieve our individual life choices. I feel The Greater Freedom is an inspirational call towards the creation of fairer societies where women's lives are no longer restricted by fear of what Everyone Else might say.