Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood: A Memoir of Growing Up Female in a Muslim World

From Publishers Weekly
Bangladeshi doctor-turned-writer Nasrin (Shame) has been living in exile since 1994, after Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against her for her criticism of Islam's repression of women. In this moving but uneven memoir, (seized when it was published in Bangladesh in 1999), Nasrin writes hauntingly of a childhood of confusion and pain. During the violent 1971 war that created Bangladesh, she and her family fled to the countryside, where she was introduced to the limits on her freedom that would only increase as she grew older. As a girl in a Muslim family, Nasrin was not allowed to go to the store to buy candy; she could not even play outside. The memoir shows the young Nasrin trying to make sense of taboos (why isn't her mother allowed to go to the movies?) and the mysteries of adulthood (why doesn't any grownup seem happy?). Married to a man who openly cheated on her, Nasrin's mother finds solace in religion: she visits a spiritual leader so revered that women fight over his partially chewed betel leaf, hoping his spittle will help them get into heaven. Nasrin's father beats her and her siblings to exhort them to do well at school. But Nasrin's tale consistently heartbreaking and sometimes gorgeously written grows disorganized as it progresses: the chronology becomes confusing, anecdotes get repeated, and the abrupt ending leaves many questions unanswered.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-"Meyebela" means "girlhood"; Nasrin coined the word because Bengali lacked an equivalent term. Here, she remembers her life from early childhood in the mid '60s to adolescence in Bangladesh, a society bound by class, colonialism, religious extremism, and the terrible social disruption of civil war. In the author's dysfunctional extended family, physical and psychological abuse, including rape, incest, bullying, lying, superstition, and religious fanaticism, are the order of the day. Nasrin sees it all, but she is powerless to alleviate her own suffering or that of those she loves, and her experience is circumscribed by the boundaries of her family, with only brief forays beyond the home. Events are seen from the sometimes odd perspectives of a child's incomplete comprehension; developing insights are layered into the narrative and revealed in a roundabout fashion, as the author follows one theme in her inner life, then doubles back to another, with repetitions as the years go by. By the time she enters adolescence, still in possession of her judgment, one can see how she might grow up-as she in fact did-into a doctor, writer, and internationally acclaimed human-rights activist. Though readers may question the portrait Nasrin paints of her society, the madness of a death fatwa and mass demonstrations calling for her public execution serve to confirm the authenticity and continuing timeliness of her account. Readers who appreciate Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things (HarperCollins, 1998) will be sympathetic to Nasrin's girlhood, and hope for another volume of her memoirs.Christine C. Menefee, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Meyebela, or girlhood, is a term coined by the author because no term for a girl's childhood exists in her native Bengali. In a memoir that's both sweeping and intimate, Nasrin, an internationally known feminist author, recounts her childhood in a strict Islamic family. Beginning with scenes of Bangladesh's struggle for independence, Nasrin describes her early life within the sprawling household of her mother's extended family. Explanations of cultural traditions and some history appear between the family particulars and Nasrin's own vividly remembered experiences. Nasrin's narrative works like memory; it's disorganized and incomplete. But her stories are unforgettable. With cinematic precision, she shows her handsome, brutal, philandering father; her long-suffering mother; the uncles who rape her; her break with traditional Islam ("It is a sin to question and to doubt," says her mother); her discovery of art, poetry, and her first sexual desires; and then her surprise when, despite everything, she continues to grow up. A revealing, deeply moving memoir with particular relevance for our times. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


USA Today, September 24, 2002
"...a richly detailed story of a traditional upbringing amid difficult change."


The Nation, November 2002
"Meyebela's bravery, vividness and groundbreaking subject matter make it a remarkable achievement, and one that will live."


Kirkus, July 1, 2002
"A raw and impassioned account of the making of a young feminist."


Los Angeles Times Book Review
Best Books of 2002, Nonfiction


Book Description
In this powerful evocation of a Muslim childhood, famed Bengali dissident Taslima Nasrin revisits her early years — from her auspicious birth on a Muslim holy day to the threshold of womanhood at 14 — in a rural village during the years East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the fight for independence, Nasrin’s memories alternate between vivid tableaux of village life and scenes of violence and flight. The extremes of her world are reflected in her father, a philanderer obsessed with education, and her mother, whose powerlessness drives her into Islamic fundamentalism. But Nasrin maintains her own voice throughout, recognizing even as a child the injustices of her world. An unflinching account of growing up female in a Muslim society by a writer called "the voice of humanism everywhere" (Wole Soyinka).


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Bengali


From the Inside Flap
This groundbreaking book throws open a window on a world unknown to most Westerners. Taslima Nasrin revisits her early years — from her auspicious birth on a Muslim holy day to the threshold of womanhood at fourteen — in a small rural village during the years East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Set against the background of the fight for independence, Nasrin’s earliest memories alternate between scenes of violence and flight and images of innocent pleasures of childhood in her extended family.
A precocious child, Nasrin’s acute awareness of the injustice and suffering endured by her mother and other Muslim women cause her to turn from the Koran in early adolescence, and to begin a journey to redefine her world. Her growing awareness of the class discriminations, gender disparities, and growing religious orthodoxy and intolerance in her family and her rural village parallel the broader social and cultural upheaval emerging in the new nation, and foreshadow the growth of a feminist dissident courageous enough to defy the fundamentalist Muslim clerics.

“Nasrin’s voice is the voice of humanism everywhere.”-- Wole Soyinka

“I am sure you have become tired of being called ‘the female Salman Rushdie’ . . . but please know that there are many people in many countries working to . . . defend you against those who would cheerfully see you dead. . . . In the West, there are too many eloquent apologists working to convince people of the fiction that women are not discriminated against in Muslim countries or that, if they are, it has nothing to do with religion.”-- Excerpt from an open letter from Salman Rrushdie to Taslima Nasrin


About the Author
TASLIMA NASRIN became a doctor in 1984 and her novel Shame brought her international feminist acclaim. A death fatwa was issued against her in 1993, condemning her views on women’s rights, health care, and religion; she has lived in exile since 1994. She has published eighteen books in thirty different languages and has received many awards, including Feminist of the Year, USA (1994), the Human Rights Award from the Government of France, the International Humanist award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and she has been named Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.


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From Bangladesh-born writer, doctor, and death fatwa recipient, a searing account of growing up in a dysfunctional family beleaguered by religious intolerance. Colorful details of food and landscape offer some relief in an otherwise grim tale of unhappiness and fanaticism. Nasrin￯﾿ﾽs story begins in the early 1970s as her family flees their provincial home for refuge with relatives in the countryside. Her country, the former east Pakistan, is fighting, with India￯﾿ﾽs help, to gain independence from west Pakistan. After the war, in the newly independent Bangladesh, Nasrin, born in 1962, describes her family: two older brothers and a younger sister; her parents (her father, a farmer￯﾿ﾽs son, became a doctor and married the daughter of the man who helped him financially); and her maternal grandparents (a spendthrift dictatorial grandfather and a grandmother determined to save money and food for her family). The writing is personal and understandably angry, although this is its weakness, since Nasrin seems to imply￯﾿ﾽwithout giving any wider context for readers to judge by￯﾿ﾽthat the horrors she details are universal: her sexual abuse by two uncles when she was five and seven; beatings by her father; her mother￯﾿ﾽs increasingly erratic behavior; and the arranged marriages of talented school friends to much older men. Nasrin attributes her growing feminism and religious skepticism to what she observes on entering adolescence: a mother who had dreamed of going to college but became a religious zealot, reviling education and women￯﾿ﾽs rights (although, paradoxically, her father is determined that Nasrin be educated); her father￯﾿ﾽs philandering; her mother￯﾿ﾽs cruel treatment of female servants; hypocritical menwho use religion to abuse and confine women; the Faithful, who discount all scientific knowledge; and limited freedom for women (a walk along the river ends in an assault). By 14, Nasrin had become critical of her family, her country, and her faith. A raw and impassioned account of the making of a young feminist.


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