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The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey To Love And Islam (2010)

by G. Willow Wilson(Favorite Author)

4.03 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0802118879 (ISBN13: 9780802118875)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Atlantic Monthly Press

review 1: I loved this book. So much. I loved it so much that I feel like I am a (very) slightly different person after reading it, or at least that I better understand the person I am after reading it. This may become my new way of explaining why I occasionally actually give a book *gasp* five stars.This is such a beautiful story of seeking and finding faith, of finding love unexpectedly, of cross-cultural...everything, of being young and abroad, of re-learning one's own country. Willow Wilson writes about her spiritual path and eventual conversion to Islam, her life as a young American woman in Cairo, and her courtship with her Egyptian husband. Writing a memoir at twenty-five is not at all absurd, it turns out, when an author has lived so much.I think this is a book that many pe... moreople can connect with, but perhaps some of my love comes from the weird amount of stuff in my own life that Wilson manages to speak to. Raised atheist but never personally an atheist. Eclectic spiritual path. Moved abroad immediately after college. That weird feeling of being sometimes more "adult" than 22-year-old friends back home who didn't expat themselves...which also feeling like you're lagging behind them somehow (of course Wilson's conversion and marriage adds layers to this, but she puts her finger on something I remember very well from moving to Japan at 22). The feeling of experiencing a huge change or affirmation in identity while abroad (although mine was not spiritual) and realizing, "wait, I have *no idea* how to be _________ in my own country."Love.
review 2: The Butterfly Mosque is provocative, memorable, and luminous. I don't agree with every point or observation Wilson includes in this memoir, but the writing is elegant and powerful, and I enjoyed the manner in which her personal experiences serve as a springboard for cultural commentary and analysis. She has a very keen eye and a strong, well-defined perspective. I feel like reading this book helped expand my perspective on a wide range of topics, which is always wonderful. Wilson does gloss over some fairly significant aspects of Middle Eastern culture and social practice (case in point: she's lucky she fell in love with an Egyptian man, not an Egyptian woman), but it is also apparent that this book required a lot of focus and determination to assemble. If she wrote about every element of her life in Egypt, the book would be overwhelming and the impact might be diffused. less

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