Random Things Tours: Stay, Daughter by Yasmin Azad

All over the world in all cultures and religions, with no exception, women should fight for their rights to be seen. And much more than that: the right to be allowed to same jobs and on same positions as men, for being allowed to be educated and freely chose their spouse.

Yasmin Azad is an unique voice of Muslim women in Sri Lanka. Among the first of being allowed to go to university, after graduation she soon went to the US where worked for 20 years as mental health counsellor. Her ´Memoir of a Muslim Girlhood´ Stay, Daughter is not only a detailed story of coming of age, but also an important testimony about the social structures and interaction within the muslim community of Sri Lanka, particularly in Galle Fort. 

Faced with the everyday challenges of modernity, each community may counter-react. The male-dominant culture may persist even after a conservative society accepted to open up to the world. Changes though cannot be kept under control, they follow their own rules. In some patriarchal contexts, men may not give up easily their priviledges and although already open up to change, they cannot accept having lost their predominance. The testimonies in this respect shared in this memoir are therefore relevant also from the sociological point of view.

I especially loved the tone of the memoir, in addition to the careful and well researched details. In the case of a memoir rotted in the everyday reality, recording the author´s evolution in the midst of social change, such details are very important.

I haven´t heard too many voices from Sri Lanka, therefore I was interested in more than one reason in the Yasmin Azad´s memoir. The reading only made me more curious to explore more of this country, especially in cultural terms.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own