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| Author: Elinor Burkett |
At a time when Americans were so riveted by questions
about their place in a newly hostile world and were
swearing off air travel, Burkett did not just take a
trip -- she took a headlong dive into enemy territories.
Her yearlong odyssey began with her assignment as
a Fulbright Professor teaching journalism in Kyrgyzstan,
a faded fragment of Soviet might in the heart of Central
Asia -- a place of dilapidated apartments, bizarre food,
and demoralized citizens clinging to the safety of Brother
Russia. She then journeyed to Afghanistan and Iraq --
where she mingled with tense Iraqis, watching the gathering
storm clouds of an American-led invasion -- as well
as Iran, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, China, and Vietnam.
Whether she's writing about being served goat's head
in a Kyrgyz yurt, checking out bowling alleys in Baghdad,
or trying to cook a chicken in a crumbling apartment,
Burkett offers an eclectic series of adventures that
are alternately comical, poignant, and discomfiting.
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From Publishers Weekly
"I'm not a danger junkie," Burkett (Another Planet, etc.) declared
at the start of her Fulbright year with her husband in Kyrgyzstan on September
18, 2001. In a burst of midlife ennui, the two wanted to move somewhere where
she could teach and they could both recharge their cultural batteries. The process
of elimination led the pair to this small central Asian republic of the former
Soviet Union, advertised as having a "liberal media" and "actively
pursuing ethnic tolerance and democratization." When they arrived in Kyrgyzstan,
reality overtook them. While appointed to teach "American-style" journalism,
Burkett found students so shaped by Stalinist culture, it was all she could do
to make them ask questions, much less stir controversy. Unable to resist a little
adventure, she and her husband visited Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and
Turkmenistan. When invited, Burkett hosted forums on the media, which usually
turned into brouhahas critiquing potential U.S. intervention in Iraq. In Afghanistan,
she met with a series of educated women who'd been terrorized by the Taliban
and remained fearful. As Burkett walked in Kabul in her burqa, getting elbowed
and bruised by men who "walked down the street as if the women simply weren't
there," she decided the struggles in Central Asia were more an attempt by
hardcore traditionalists to fight modernization than about religion per se. Few
readers would actually want to face a dinner of roasted goat brains or dodge
bombs on the highway passing the Tora Bora caves; reading Burkett's snappy, witty
account nicely suffices.
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Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier
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$13.95 (softcover)
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