June 4, 2016
The 2016 title for the Nashua Public Library’s annual Nashua Reads: One City, One Book program is The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg.
With support from the Friends of the Nashua Public Library and the Ella Anderson Trust, Jenny Nordberg will come to Nashua to speak and answer questions about the book. The event will be held at the Nashua Public Library on September 30. Tickets will be available at the Nashua Public Library and at www.mktix.com/npl.
About the Book
In Afghanistan, where society is ruled almost entirely by men, the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the arrival of a daughter is often mourned as a failure. A bacha posh (literally “dressed up like a boy” in Dari) is a third kind of child–a girl who will be raised as a boy and presented as a son to the world. The Underground Girls of Kabul is a dramatic profile of Afghan women and girls clandestinely living on the other side of the gender divide.
The book follows bacha posh through childhood and puberty, when they are expected to begin transforming into subordinate wives and mothers. Some will refuse to rescind their male prerogatives in what the UN calls the world’s most dangerous country to be a woman.
Awards
The Underground Girls of Kabul was awarded the 2015 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Business Insider, Columbus Dispatch, Publishers Weekly, PopMatters, FP Interrupted, and TruthDig.
About the Author
Investigative reporter Jenny Nordberg broke the story of how girls grow up disguised as boys in gender-segregated Afghanistan. Her investigation was published in 2010 in The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. At The New York Times investigative unit, Nordberg worked on an examination of the American freight railroad system, a series that won a Pulitzer Prize.
Nashua Reads author Jenny Nordberg.
Nordberg has produced and written documentaries for American television about Iraqi refugees, Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation, and the impact of the global financial crisis in Europe. She was a member of the first investigative team at Swedish Broadcasting’s national radio division.
Nordberg holds a B.A. in law and journalism from Stockholm University and an M.A. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
For more information about this speaker please visit www.prhspeakers.com.
Get Your Copy Now
The library has over 50 copies of The Underground Girls of Kabul, including large-print and audio versions. In addition, book kits are available containing multiple copies for borrowing by book groups.
So reserve your copy; read it; talk about it with your friends, coworkers, and neighbors; and then come to the Nashua Public Library to meet the author this fall.
About One City, One Book
The goal of the One City, One Book program is to get as many Nashuans as possible to read the same book and talk about it with friends, coworkers, and neighbors. The program is now in its 14th year.
The idea of community reading programs originated in 1998 when the Washington Center for the Book sponsored “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book.” In the years since, similar programs, under names like “One City, One Book,” “The Big Read,” and others, have been held throughout the US.
For more information about the Nashua Reads program, contact Carol Luers Eyman at (603) 589-4610 or carol.eyman@nashualibrary.org, or visit www.nashuareads.com.