Common Reading 2003-2004
West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamim Ansary
Discussion Guide for Faculty-led Student Groups at the Opening Sessions
for Students
The following resources, questions and exercises are meant to be a guide
for your faculty-led discussion section of West of Kabul, East of
New York. Please feel free to adopt those suggestions that you find
useful and to invent your own unique approaches to this text. We hope
you have a wonderful and fruitful discussion with the students!
Setting the Room:
Before students arrive, you may want to create a particular setting for
students to interact with. You might want to use photographs of Afghanistan
and of New York as a visual contrast for students to respond to, stimulating
discussions of the text. As you prepare for Student Opening Sessions,
you may want to visit this year’s Common Reading Website. Jane Holzka,
with technical assistance from Ali Abdullah, has designed this year's
Common Reading website full
of resources, links, and teaching ideas.
Some other Internet resources include:
Some helpful books in the LaGuardia library include:
- Ewans, Martin. Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and
Politics (DS 356 .E95 2002)
- Marsden, Peter. The Taliban: War, Religion and the New Order
in Afghanistan (DS 371.2 .M373 1998)
- Mirepoix, Camille. Afghanistan in Pictures (DS 352 .M56)
- Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism
in Central Asia (DS 371.2 .R367 2001)
About the Author: (From his website)
Ansary grew up in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. He was named after
Tamim-i-Ansar, one of two brothers who conquered Afghanistan for Islam
1200 years ago and who now lie buried in matching 12-foot-long marble
tombs atop a hill overlooking the artists and poets cemetery. Ansary’s
father taught science and literature at Kabul University, and his American
mother taught English at the first girls’ school in Afghanistan.
His relatives lived throughout the city and in the nearby grape-growing
village of Deh Yahya.
Then the family moved to Lashkargah, a small town in the middle of the
desert in southwestern Afghanistan, the headquarters of a vast American-funded
project to make the desert bloom.
In 1964, Ansary got a scholarship to an American high school, Colorado
Rocky Mountain School, and moved to America. Soon he plunged into the
sixties counterculture like a dog into surf, wrote for an “alternative”
weekly called The Portland Scribe, lived in communes, worked in restaurants,
wrote obscure, experimental fiction, and quit his job often in order
to hit the road and have adventures.
In 1980, Ansary traveled through North Africa and Turkey to explore
Islam and found Islamism instead. It took him 14 years of working as
a textbook editor for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich to recover from the
shock. After 9/11, however, he hit the road again, this time to visit
Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and to make a journey to Kabul. After
that, he took a long nap.
A regular columnist for Microsoft’s learning site Encarta.com,
Ansary has written nonfiction books for children, jokes for a mathematics
program (“edutainment” software), a literary memoir, several
novels for “reluctant readers,” a series of educational
comic books called Adventures Plus, countless letters to friends, and
one two-line play.
His commentary has been heard on the Bill Moyers Show, the News Hour
with Jim Lehrer, the Oprah Winfrey Show, Hardball, and numerous National
Public Radio stations.
About the Book:
West of Kabul, East of New York is the third in a series of
“personal narratives” selected for the common reading at LaGuardia.
Ansary’s memoir depicts a deeply personal struggle to straddle Afghanistan
and American culture. In addition to building on a theme of particular
importance to LaGuardia students—biculturalism—Ansary’s
text is also particularly timely, pulling readers into a larger historical
context for the rapid events of today’s world. Richard Eder of the
New York Times writes: Ansary “delivered us from text into
context, from crisis into history, from isolation into geography, from
a world shattered to one that, having lived through millennia of shatterings,
stays mournfully round, and around.”
Pre-Reading Exercises: (helpful for groups where
many students haven’t read the book)
- Examine the front cover of the book. Ask students to talk about Ansary’s
biography and his picture on the back cover. Ask students what connections
they make between the images and the text.
- Ask students to respond to the images on the front cover.
- Read the “Prologue” with students and the e-mail at the
end. Ask students to think about the ways in which Ansary’s text
responded to an immediate historical situation. How did his personal
history inform our larger history?
Read the Epilogue Together: (helpful for groups
where many students haven’t read the book)
- What is the importance biculturalism in this book?
- How does Tamim Ansary’s story relate to students’ life
experiences? Do they see any similarities? Differences?
- How do immigrant students handle their identities growing up in or
adjusting to a bilingual/bicultural society?
- How do native-born students relate to this immigrant experience?
Association Questions:
- Ask students if they are familiar with the historical background of
Afghanistan. Discuss the social and political connections between the
Afghanistan and New York. Were students familiar with Afghanistan before
9/11? Why or why not? Ask students to consider the meaning of their
answers to this question.
- Talk about the titles of the book’s three main sections: “The
Lost World,” “Looking for Islam” and “Forgetting
Afghanistan.” What do these titles reveal about the book? About
Ansary?
Association Exercises:
- Show students a photograph Afghanistan. Show them a photograph of
New York. Ask them to comment on what they “see.”
- Ask students to free write for 5 minutes on the topic of straddling
cultures. Ask students to share their free writes.
- Link the e-mail at the back of the book to students own lives by
asking students to free write for 5 minutes and write a mini-letter
from New York to anyone living outside of New York. What issue would
students address? Why?
Additional Resources:
For comments, suggestions or further inquiries about this year’s
Common Reading, please contact J. Elizabeth Clark (x5665) or lclark@lagcc.cuny.edu.
**Discussion Guide for Student Openings Sessions created
by J. Elizabeth Clark
|
