Our Workshops

Writer as Reader Workshops

From the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban seen through the eyes of a young woman in Kabul to the school-building "books, not bombs" project initiated by a lost mountain climber in Pakistan's Karakoram, these stories challenge the "otherness" of lives too frequently narrowed to geo-political stereotypes of terrorism, religious extremism, and cultural difference. While both books address crucial issues of education, gender, religion, and culture, at heart they tell of human beings whose aspirations for learning, freedom, peace, and personal fulfillment resonate throughout the narratives.
 
Told from the points of view of an adventurer-turned-humanitarian who comes to realize that "the enemy is ignorance," consequently devoting himself to shaping "stones into schools," and a sixteen-year-old who dreams of being a journalist, only to have that ambition, along with her education and her very identity, "forbidden," these narratives emphasize the roles of literacy, education, and story-telling in connecting individual lives to a larger world.

Texts: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin 2006, ISBN 978-0-14-303825-2) and My Forbidden Face by Latifa (no last name) (Talik Miraxax Books 2001, ISBN 0-7868-6901-1)