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One Book, One Island: one more activity-packed week Aquick refresher: The Atheneum's One Book, One Island launched at the beginning of the year as a way to promote community unity and literacy through a shared reading experience. Molly Anderson and the Atheneum staff picked books with a Middle Eastern theme. Adult readers had the critically acclaimed and oft-cited novel "The Kite Runner" (2003). Younger readers had Deborah Ellis's "The Breadwinnner" and Jeanette Winter's "The Librarian of Basra." All the books have been free. Written by Khaled Hosseini, "The Kite Runner" documents the eventual destruction of a close bond shared by two boys growing up in different castes during 1970s Afghanistan, and how the young man of higher class eventually makes reparations as an adult for the childhood betrayal of his young friend. The timing of the selection could not have been better for the Atheneum - in addition to the prescience of the book's subject matter, Marc Foster ("Monster's Ball," "Finding Neverland") is making the story into a film, set to release this fall. In addition to two kite-making workshops, the Atheneum has commissioned a lecture by an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. and also a performance of "The Kite Runner" by a Manhattan-based theatre company that adapts works of literature for the stage. Storyteller Diana Edgecomb performs in the Kurdish storytelling tradition, and Nantucketer Homa Nasab is flying all the way home from the University of Cambridge to discuss the culture of her native Afghanistan. All events are free. KITE-MAKING WORKSHOPS When: Friday, March 23, 2:30 p.m., and Saturday, March 24, 10 a.m. Where: The Nantucket Elementary School Gymnasium (Friday) and The Nantucket High School Gymnasium (Saturday) Cost: Free Admission; all children must be accompanied by an adult, space is limited, and registration is required. Please call 229-1110, ext. 118 to sign up. "JEWELS OF MESOPOTAMIA: STORIES AND THE STORY TELLING TRADITIONS OF THE KURDISH PEOPLE" Boston-based storyteller Diane Edgecomb became aware of the troubles of the Kurdish people while acting with Teatro di Nascosto, a theatre troupe in Italy. The theater specialized in dramatizing the stories of refugee people, and several Kurdish refugees were living and working with them in the late-90s. "I was moved by their plight and started doing advocacy work… when I wondered what their storytelling traditions might be," remembered Edgecomb, who will be sharing Kurdish folk tales she gathered herself only a few years ago while living for weeks at a time amongst the Kurds in the Zagros Mountains. "It took a lot of time to make the right connections," Edgecomb said. "It's very difficult for the Kurds to trust people. In Turkey, you can't even pursue the Kurdish tradition - they've been forbidden to speak or write their own language… and it's not looked on kindly even if they talk to foreigners. So it was quite an odyssey to create structure I needed to get in and out without raising any notice." Edgecomb visited for weeks at a time to collect over 150 stories, which, she said, often parallel European fairy tales. "They're stories are similar to our stories. There are hero stories. There's a Kurdish Cinderella with a slipper … I may tell a Kurdish version of the story of the boy who cried wolf." The Kurds and their culture, Edgecomb believes, are the key to the Middle East puzzle, offering outsiders much in the way of understanding of and even possible resolution to conflict in the region. "Kurds teach us a lot about the discriminatory culture in the region. Kurds are struggling to have linguistic rights, cultural rights and ethnic rights, and the fact that they've been denied this so consistently speaks to the problem of rights in the Middle East," Edgecomb said. "Strategically, you also have to look at Kurdistan. It's smack dab in the middle of the region; they're in the most strategic area and they're also Western-oriented. So much about Kurdistan that makes it like the key to the Middle East, and yet no one knows much about them, because the countries who have taken over their land have kept the information on the population well hidden." When: Friday, March, 7 p.m. Where: Nantucket Atheneum, 1 India Street Cost: Free Admission, but tickets are required. Please pick them up at the children's library desk beginning March 6. "OSAMA" AND A "TASTE OF AFGHANISTAN," In the interest of sharing different perspectives on contemporary Afghan culture, the Atheneum will be screening 2003's "Osama" (PG-13) In the film, a mother and daughter have lost all their male family members to previous Afghan wars. They work to support themselves until the Taliban closes the hospital where they are employed and forbids women to leave the house without a male companion. "Osama" follows their clever struggle to survive under Taliban rule. To accompany the screening, Annye's Whole Foods will serve a feast of traditional Afghani foods in traditional Afghani style, using naan as a scoop, for example. "All is shared on one large platter, including meats, rice, stews, and vegetables," the press release explained. "Home made chutneys, pickles, fruits nuts and fresh naan accompany. First, everyone eats a piece of naan, honoring the host by saying that even a little bread would be enough!" The menu will include chai, ginger tamarind eggplant and lemon yogurt chicken kabobs; diners will go home with recipes, a jar of Afghanistan spice mix and a lesson in the Afghan style of breaking bread. When: Saturday, March 24, 7 p.m. Where: Nantucket Atheneum, 1 India Street HOMA T. NASAB ON AFGHAN CULTURE For two weeks, Homa Nasab has returned home to Nantucket from England, where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D in museum studies at Oxford University. Nasab is writing her Ph.D in "ways non- Western countries are using Western institutions to narrate their histories." Webmaster of MuseumViews.com, Nasab will present a lecture on Afghan culture, as depicted in the National Museum in Kabul. Using art catalogues stored in the Oxford library, Nasab took photos of artifacts from the museum that have long been inaccessible, or have been "looted or bombed during various of stages of conflict" in recent years. "What has been represented in mass media is politically charged; it's a very recent, very narrow and specific angle through which the history and the culture of this particular country has been represented," Nasab said. "In my opinion, the advantage of viewing history through the lens of a museum is that you deal with the textual as well as visual, objectbased documents, so it's a double-whammy for the kind of evidence you get." When: Sunday, March 25, 5 p.m. Where: The Nantucket Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street DEBORAH ELLIS, AUTHOR OF " THE BREADWINNER" Middle School students have been able to participate in the One Book, One Island program by reading "The Breadwinner," by Deborah Ellis, who will talk about her experiences volunteering in Afghani refugee camps throughout the '90s and co-founding Women for Women in Afghanistan, an organization that is dedicated to helping Afghani girls in refugee camps in Pakistan. In "The Breadwinner," Parvana is an 11-year-old Afghani girl who must dress like a boy in order to work to support her family after her father dies at the hands of the Taliban in the early years of its regime. "A lot of things that happened in the book are based on things I witnessed or heard about in the refugee camps," said Ellis, who has been struck by the different ways American children have been able to identify with the children in the story. "Some kids live in different kinds of war zones here - kids experience different levels of violence in their homes or communities here, so those kids can relate to kids undergoing violence in other parts of the world. Other kids are just really struck by things we take for granted here when they realize kids are living in conditions that are very restricted compared to what we live in," she said. When: Monday, March 26, 1:15 p.m. Where: Nantucket Cyrus Peirce School, Surfside Road DR. ANDREA RUGH SPEAKS ON AFGHAN CULTURE Anthropologist Andrea Rugh had gone to Afghanistan to study the lives of its women in the days when Sept. 11 was just another block on the calendar, and she has been returning ever since to see the women behind the veils to which we have grown accustomed. For the One Book, One Island lecture, Rugh's talk will "look at various aspects of Afghan women's life, describe Afghanistan's social context and explain how our Western models of gender don't fit them well." "Most of them carry on with their lives, and you don't hear them complain about their situation very much," said Rugh, an adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., who has recently published her scholarly work, "The Political Culture of Leadership in the United Arab Emirates." When: Tuesday, March 27 at 7 p.m. Where: The Coffin School, 4 Winter Street AMERICAN PLACE THEATER PRESENTS A PERFORMANCE OF "THE KITE RUNNER" Based in New York City, the American Place Theater dramatizes works of fiction for performance in schools and other venues. "I only use the words of the author, but I put it all in the present tense," said American Place Theater founder Wynn Handemann. This week, it brings its one-man, one-act play based on "The Kite Runner" to Nantucket. "I only do a portion of this book, a portion which I believe is an entity unto itself, which is the first portion, when the protagonist is still in his teens," said Handemann, who had to step lightly around a particularly violent scene at the beginning of the book. "I used words from the event, but left out key words that made it explicitly a rape. My version leaves it to the imagination, but lets everyone know it's violent and abusive." In addition to the performance, American Place Theatre offers pre- and post-show discussion sessions to help students contextualize and process the material. When: Friday, March 30, 7 p.m. Where: The Nantucket High School Auditorium, Surfside Road I |
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