Kirjahaku

This book explores the puzzling phenomenon of new veiling practices among lower middle class women in Cairo, Egypt. Although these women are part of a modernizing middle class, they also voluntarily adopt a traditional symbol of female subordination. How can this paradox be explained? An explanation emerges which reconceptualizes what appears to be reactionary behavior as a new style of political struggle--as accommodating protest. These women, most of them clerical workers in the large government bureaucracy, are ambivalent about working outside the home, considering it a change which brings new burdens as well as some important benefits. At the same time they realize that leaving home and family is creating an intolerable situation of the erosion of their social status and the loss of their traditional identity. The new veiling expresses women's protest against this. MacLeod argues that the symbolism of the new veiling emerges from this tense subcultural dilemma, involving elements of both resistance and acquiescence.

What does it take to overcome betrayal?Ceredigion, 12th Century Wales: When her beloved grandmother dies, the orphan Tanwen labors through the long summer days to create the garden which will allow her to survive the fast approaching winter. But as autumn descends, dark rains arrive. The garden drowns in a welter of rotting leeks and beans. Tanwen, just seven and alone, must leave the only home she's known behind. She sets out on the dangerous road to a distant town where she believes her dead mother's estranged sister abides. The determined child survives, but she is always an outsider in her aunt's home and town. As a grown woman, she makes an unusual, even rash, choice. The consequences will be beyond her imagining. Tanwen's journeys will take her to the lovely manor Adpar, her first true home, then to the dreaded borders of the enemy English and to the darkest challenges a woman could face. But in her trek through the deep forests and mountains of Wales, and her precarious new life in the border lord's castle at Ludelaue, she will find hope too, as she learns a new way to create and to love. For a new and most necessary garden will be required of her. And this garden must not fail.Set against the turmoil of border wars and the rise of an independent Wales, A Necessary Garden tells the intertwining stories of Tanwen, her noble lover Owain, the enigmatic mapmaker and spy Gethin, and the beloved child Bryn. An adventure, a romance, a tale of a mother's love, and an exploration of the mysterious powers of nature and art, this atmospheric and compelling novel reveals one woman's search for a path beyond betrayal. What does it take to find the courage and resources to make oneself anew?

What does it take to overcome betrayal?Ceredigion, 12th Century Wales: When her beloved grandmother dies, the orphan Tanwen labors through the long summer days to create the garden which will allow her to survive the fast approaching winter. But as autumn descends, dark rains arrive. The garden drowns in a welter of rotting leeks and beans. Tanwen, just seven and alone, must leave the only home she's known behind. She sets out on the dangerous road to a distant town where she believes her dead mother's estranged sister abides. The determined child survives, but she is always an outsider in her aunt's home and town. As a grown woman, she makes an unusual, even rash, choice. The consequences will be beyond her imagining. Tanwen's journeys will take her to the lovely manor Adpar, her first true home, then to the dreaded borders of the enemy English and to the darkest challenges a woman could face. But in her trek through the deep forests and mountains of Wales, and her precarious new life in the border lord's castle at Ludelaue, she will find hope too, as she learns a new way to create and to love. For a new and most necessary garden will be required of her. And this garden must not fail.Set against the turmoil of border wars and the rise of an independent Wales, A Necessary Garden tells the intertwining stories of Tanwen, her noble lover Owain, the enigmatic mapmaker and spy Gethin, and the beloved child Bryn. An adventure, a romance, a tale of a mother's love, and an exploration of the mysterious powers of nature and art, this atmospheric and compelling novel reveals one woman's search for a path beyond betrayal. What does it take to find the courage and resources to make oneself anew?

Unexpected love, unlooked for adventure, and one woman's quest to be free.The Western Coast of Scotia, 1135Young widow Ailsa runs Caerwyn, her family's estate, and dreams of leaving her past and her duties behind for just one summer, voyaging to the far ports of Ireland with her cousin Dugald. But Dugald claims the times are too dangerous and leaves her behind. When a message arrives from the new Scots king, announcing that she and her estate have been granted to an English knight, alone and frightened, a furious Ailsa vows she will regain her lands. Ailsa's struggle to avoid a forced marriage and keep her home leads to a challenging journey to the king's castle at Carlisle and a new understanding of the turmoil and changes coming to the Western Coast and Isles. For the new king of Scotia favors English and Norman customs, and the old Gaelic laws, like the right of a woman to inherit or freely choose who she will marry, are falling away. In the endless delays at court Ailsa learns much about the frightening realities of power and the turmoil of clashing cultures coming. She meets the elegant and insistent Hugh, friendly Effie, fellow widow Alice, and overpowering Beatrice. And she encounters the landless knight Robert, who surprises her at each turn. When the female storyteller Eachna comes to Carlisle, Ailsa finds a new passion and new daring. She learns about the courage that creativity demands and the complexity of the freedom she craves. Powerful and unscrupulous men need her and her estate; can Ailsa escape their grasp? Can she imagine a future that will save Caerwyn's people and invent a way to live truly free?