Get the Anthology!

YWP has just published an Anthology with great student work. Support them and YWP! To order a copy, send $17.50 (includes postage) to: YWP / 69 Swift St., #300 / S. Burlington, VT 05403 Order form/invoice, CLICK HERE. Questions? 860-0570 --gg
Videos, sound and info on Anthology Release Celebration.

Prompt responses due Friday

14. Procrastination. If you had more time, you’d be able to put it off longer. What do you put off to the last moment? Why? Tell a story about how you just barely got something done in time – or didn’t.
Alternate: Splat! Use that word in a story or a poem.

Click here for more info about submitting to our weekly Newspaper Series.

Come Back to Afghanistan

ggevalt's picture
Submitted by ggevalt on October 23, 2007 - 10:08.

Akbar, Said Hyder and Susan Burton. Come Back to Afghanistan. Bloomsbury, 2006. $14.95ISBN9781596910683 (pap.); Bloomsbury, 2005. $24.95. ISBN 978-1582345208.

YWP BOOK FORUM

Return to GMBA page

Genre: Memoir

Themes: Post 9/11 life in Afghanistan, family, the Taliban, tribes, government and travel.

Author information: Said Hyder Akbar was a high school student when he decided to follow his father to his homeland of Afghanistan in 2003. He is currently a student at Yale University. Akbar has started his own company to rebuild schools and pipelines in a rural province in Afghanistan.

Susan Burton is a writer and contributing editor to the NPR radio program This American Life .

Plot Summary: A chronicle of Akbar’s experiences and reactions of three summers in Afghanistan observing and helping his father set up a provincial government.

Booktalk: After 9/11, Said’s father was asked to come back to Afghanistan by Hamid Karzai to help rebuild the war-torn country. Said, a high school student at the time, followed his father. Armed with a tape recorder (used for the radio documentaries for This American Life ) he captured everything he saw and heard, from life on the streets to secret meetings. The result is a heart-warming look at a country most know very little about. We come to care deeply for the people we are introduced to and the future of their beautiful mountainous country.

Curriculum tie-ins:

History:

  • Research the history of Afghanistan.
  • Discuss how landscape affects government.
  • Discuss the interference of other countries in a country’s rebuilding effort.
  • Discuss what democracy and freedom mean to you.
  • Research and discuss Islam and sects.

English

  • Read a novel set in Afghanistan and compare it to this memoir.
  • Pick one memorable time in your life and write about it.
  • Turn this piece of writing into a story or a poem.

If you loved this, you’ll like:

  • Barakat, Ibtisam. Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood . FSG, 2007.
  • Ellis, Deborah. The Breadwinner . Groundwood Books, 2001.
  • Hosseini, Kahlid. The Kite Runner . Penguin Group, 2004.
  • Stewart, Rory. Places in Between . Harcourt, 2006.

Additional resources:

  • “This American Life” (2003); Episode 230. and Episode 254
  • Johnson, Chris. Afghanistan : The Background, the Issues, the People . Oxfam Publishing, 2004.
  • Jones, Ann. Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan . Picador, 2007.
  • Klaits, Alexander. Love and War in Afghanistan . Seven Stories Press, 2006.
  • Tanner, Stephen. Afghanistan : A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban . Perseus Publishing, 2003.

Mentors

To read feedback YWP college mentors' comments on entries to the Newspaper Series, click on names below. To read all entries that have feedback, click here. You must be logged in.
To read about mentors, click here.