Reading Response 6

I finished The View from Garden City ,and the ending was spectacular. I feel like I really met the women in this book. Huda, I watched as she struggle with accepting that she could not marry a poor man, her marriage to a kind man but not the love story all girls dream of, and I saw her get pregnant. Huda's mother Karima, I met her as a withering old women trying to marry off her children, but I got to read her story of how her father died and in the wake of his death she met her husband. Huda's grandmother, Selwa, I depicted as simply the sweet and blunt grandmother, but I got to read her story of love and the deaths of her many children through miscarriage and bad health. Afkar a brave and stunning women, who killed herself for the freedom her husband had stolen from her with his charm. Yusriyya, gave me a perspective of the farmers in Egypt. She was in love with her farm and wide blue sky and then was sent off to marry a man in the city. her marriage proved most unkind, her husband married another women and didn't often care for Yusriyya. The last story I read was the most interesting, Samira. Samira had everything she needed, a good home, a good husband, and a beautiful child. But all of this crumbled beneath her feet when she came in contact with her best friends husband, a man she was in love with in her youth. Her need for him is overwhelming and she could not control herself when she decided to meet him. They had a long passionate affair, that was always a secret. It all ended when both her husband and this man died within days of each other.

I loved how the author inner connected all of these womens lives and wove a beautiful story of what it is like to be a woman in Cairo, Egypt.

This pictured made me think of how the book was told from an American girl that was studying in Cairo, and how she met all these Muslim women.

5th Reading Response

The novel I am reading is, The View from Garden City, by Carolyn Baugh. Once again I have came upon an author that writes in serveral different perspectives. In, The View from Garden City, there is six different women's stories being told. All these women are living in Cairo, Egypt, and are dealing with different aspects of relationships with different men. So far, I have been introduced to Huda, Selwa, and Karima. Karima is the mother of Huda, and Selwa is Huda's grandmother. Huda is having to go through the pressure of finding a suitor to marry, but she is in love with a boy she attends the university with. He is poor and has to work two jobs, and this is not an acceptable suitor in the eyes of her mother, Karima. Selwa is not as unaccepting as Karima, she mysteriously tells Huda, "You'll see. You're not waiting for anything from anyone."