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Travels Unveiled

Name: Travels Unveiled
Author: Jean Juba
ISBN: 978-1-5052-4867-8

ONE WOMAN'S JOURNEY ON THE RAGGED EDGES OF CIVILIZATION

by Jean Juba ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2015

One woman’s deft, thoughtful account of Muslim-American and male-female relationships.

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A personal memoir that travels decades, cultures, and many miles.

This is a man’s world, and no one knows it better that Juba, whose memoir—her first book—opens in 1999 in the unlikely setting of rural Pakistan. While staying in a hotel there, she responded to a request from her guide that she—as an American, who therefore must be smart—fix a satellite dish for some other guests. She replied willingly, only to find that the guests in question were Taliban; there was no room for mistakes, electrical or otherwise, particularly with her being an employee of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. In an extended flashback beginning with the next chapter, she details how she came to find herself in such a precarious situation. As a directionless youngster, she was an Affirmative Action recruit for a construction road crew and thus became one of the few women working in a male-dominated field. The challenges were real, from being denied opportunities for promotion and advancement to sexual harassment. Juba learned that her greatest chance for success lay in being observant and more or less invisible, to play by the rules, not make waves, but to learn everything she could about “the games men play”—the coded ways they interact with each other and with women. The knowledge she gained served her well in her second career with the U.S. diplomatic corps in the Foreign Service. Initially stationed in Islamabad, she interacted on a daily basis with conservative Muslims whose attitudes about women’s roles outside the home were profoundly different than those in America yet in some ways distressingly similar. In Pakistan, Juba had to navigate her otherness not only as a woman, but also as an American, walking a fine line between respecting cultural sensitivities and “leaning in” as a professional woman. Her stories about how she handled her interactions with the locals—almost all men, since Pakistani women have limited professional opportunities—are genuine, often funny, and sometimes frightening, as with the Taliban story. The stories also comprise an appealing travelogue as Juba, her colleagues, and their handlers traverse the enormous, diverse country seldom seen by Westerners. One flaw—possibly unavoidable due to professional restraint—is that apart from a harrowing chapter about the aftermath of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi, which Juba was sent to help oversee, readers learn little about what Juba’s job actually entailed.

One woman’s deft, thoughtful account of Muslim-American and male-female relationships.

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-5052-4867-8

Page Count: 154

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.