List Price : $17.99 Price : lowest price on store
Product Description
"The young Afghan women in However Tall The Mountain are pioneers. Their story is one of resilience and courage. This book is a testament to the power of hope and the will to dream in a country where so many dreams have been cut short."
--Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
"Awista Ayub has movingly captured the indomitable spirit of Afghan women in this chronicle of brave girls who risked persecution and worse to pursue the dreams of ordinary childhood. In doing what they love most in life - playing soccer - the girls become emblems of the fight for equality and human rights under the Taliban. Their story reminds us that there is always hope and possibility for a brighter future - even in the wreckage left by war and conflict."
--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
A ball can start a revolution.
Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained strong. An athlete her whole life, she was inspired to start the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange after September 11, 2001, as a way of uniting girls of Afghanistan and giving them hope for their future. She chose soccer because little more than a ball and a field is needed to play; however, the courage it would take for girls in Afghanistan to do this would have to be tremendous--and the social change it could bring about by making a loud and clear statement for Afghan women was enough to convince Awista that it was possible, and even necessary.
Under Taliban rule, girls in Afghanistan couldn't play outside of their homes, let alone participate in a sport on a team. So, Awista brought eight girls from Afghanistan to the United States for a soccer clinic, in the hope of not only teaching them the sport, but also instilling confidence and a belief in their self-worth. They returned to Afghanistan and spread their interest in playing soccer; when Awista traveled there to host another clinic, hundreds of girls turned out to participate--and the numbers of players and teams keep growing. What began with eight young women has now exploded into something of a phenomenon. Fifteen teams now compete in the Afghanistan Football Federation, with hundreds of girls participating.
Against all odds and fear, these girls decided to come together and play a sport that has reintroduced the very traits that decades of war had cruelly stripped away from them--confidence and self-worth. In However Tall the Mountain, Awista tells both her own story and the deeply moving stories of the eight original girls, describing their daily lives back in Afghanistan, and how they found strength in each other, in teamwork, and in themselves--taking impossible risks to obtain freedoms we take for granted. This is a story about hope, about what home is, and in the end, about determination. As the Afghan proverb says, However tall the mountain, there's always a road.
Reading Group Guide available at www.HyperionBooks.com
Product Description
"The young Afghan women in However Tall The Mountain are pioneers. Their story is one of resilience and courage. This book is a testament to the power of hope and the will to dream in a country where so many dreams have been cut short."
--Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
"Awista Ayub has movingly captured the indomitable spirit of Afghan women in this chronicle of brave girls who risked persecution and worse to pursue the dreams of ordinary childhood. In doing what they love most in life - playing soccer - the girls become emblems of the fight for equality and human rights under the Taliban. Their story reminds us that there is always hope and possibility for a brighter future - even in the wreckage left by war and conflict."
--Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
A ball can start a revolution.
Born in Kabul, Awista Ayub escaped with her family to Connecticut in 1981, when she was two years old, but her connection to her heritage remained strong. An athlete her whole life, she was inspired to start the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange after September 11, 2001, as a way of uniting girls of Afghanistan and giving them hope for their future. She chose soccer because little more than a ball and a field is needed to play; however, the courage it would take for girls in Afghanistan to do this would have to be tremendous--and the social change it could bring about by making a loud and clear statement for Afghan women was enough to convince Awista that it was possible, and even necessary.
Under Taliban rule, girls in Afghanistan couldn't play outside of their homes, let alone participate in a sport on a team. So, Awista brought eight girls from Afghanistan to the United States for a soccer clinic, in the hope of not only teaching them the sport, but also instilling confidence and a belief in their self-worth. They returned to Afghanistan and spread their interest in playing soccer; when Awista traveled there to host another clinic, hundreds of girls turned out to participate--and the numbers of players and teams keep growing. What began with eight young women has now exploded into something of a phenomenon. Fifteen teams now compete in the Afghanistan Football Federation, with hundreds of girls participating.
Against all odds and fear, these girls decided to come together and play a sport that has reintroduced the very traits that decades of war had cruelly stripped away from them--confidence and self-worth. In However Tall the Mountain, Awista tells both her own story and the deeply moving stories of the eight original girls, describing their daily lives back in Afghanistan, and how they found strength in each other, in teamwork, and in themselves--taking impossible risks to obtain freedoms we take for granted. This is a story about hope, about what home is, and in the end, about determination. As the Afghan proverb says, However tall the mountain, there's always a road.
Reading Group Guide available at www.HyperionBooks.com
However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home Reviews
| 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:  sweet, light story of girls in afghanistan, By This review is from: However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home (Hardcover) This sweet memoir of a girl's soccer team in Afghanistan manages to touch on many of the tougher issues facing citizens, and women in particular, in Afghanistan. The tone is light as the narrator describes a small set of teenage girls learning to pass, dribble, and cooperate on the playing field; but there are harsher moments, too, which the narrator incorporates without unnecessary drama. Soccer is considered a boy's sport in Afghanistan, so the formation of a team - and eventually a league - was frequently controversial. Part of the story is about the intensive, six-week long training camp organized for the team of novice players in the US. The narrator describes their impressions of America and their increasing self-confidence on the field. They don't win many games, but they gain skills and expertise that make them the finest female soccer players in Afghanistan by the time they return home. Spliced in with the narrator's account of the training... Read more 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful: amazing true story . . . told ineffectively, By This review is from: However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home (Hardcover) Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program ( What's this?) This review is difficult to write. I really want to like this book. I really like the story behind the book. However, the book is not well-written. Some of the book is written in the present-tense, and other parts in the past-tense. The timeline is hard to discern, and what should have been the climax was the very first story in the book. There wasn't a clear narrative, unfortunately. Also, the writing was very amateur. Overall, the book deserves a much better editor, perhaps even a ghost writer to assist in tying all the disparate pieces together into a cohesive story. A professional writer could have made characters of these girls, engaging the reader. I have just read the book and I can hardly imagine what each girl looks like or tell you the difference between one and another. That is how the stories began to blend together. The stories about the girls on the team jump all over the place. First, the story of the girls playing in America is told. Then, for... Read more 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:  Standing tall in a culture of oppression, By This review is from: However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home (Hardcover) Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program ( What's this?) Imagine if you will, that you are a female living in a war torn country. You are essentially denied any freedom because of your gender. You cannot play sports or go to school. You can't watch TV or listen to music. You are not even able to leave the house without a male relative escorting you. In short, you are totally oppressed. This is what life under the Taliban was like for girls and women in Afghanistan. After over 30 years of Taliban rule, Afghanistan is slowly crawling out from under the oppressive thumb of the religious fundamentalism that they were forced under in the late 70's. In this book we see how social views have been clouded by Taliban rule to such a degree that it is still hard for Afghan women to go out and make a mark for themselves. Awista Ayub's However Tall the Mountain, is the story of eight young girls and their stories of life in Afghanistan. It is also her story. As an Afghan refugee who was smuggled out of the country as... Read more |
› See all 23 customer reviews...
products reviews of cheap However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home cyber monday for sale Lowest Price Guarantee, Save Shipping, and Free 30 Day Returns. Compare prices However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home at main stores.
