The first illustrated book that I've read. I used to think illustrated books were glorified comic books, but was duly impressed with Samanci's autobiography.The illustrations are wonderful - engaging, whimsical and humorous. The chapters are all delightful and tell touching stories of Samanci's childhood.
I learned quite a bit about Turkey. Such as:
- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is the "Father of Turks" who make Turkey secular to unit the country. He also introduced the Latin alphabet since the Ottomon alphabet is so complicated.
- Students take exams to see which high school & college they qualify for; if a student is sick that day, then too bad, the student will not go to a good school
- Bribery is rampant
- During Ramandan, every city, town & village hires a drummer to stand next to an apartment building to wake people up between 3am & 4am so that they can eat before fasting; drummers will not leave until all the lights are on in the building
- In secular schools, headscarves are not allowed so female students wear hoodies; although they need to have the hood down in class
- Kurds are persecuted in Turkey
- Turks are just like Americans; the author was pressured to go into math & science so that she could have a respectable job; she pursued her love of arts & media & is now an assistant professor at Northwestern
No comments:
Post a Comment