Snapshots: This Afghan American Life - Softcover

Tamim Ansary was born and raised in Afghanistan, son of the first American woman to marry an Afghan. He came to the United States in 1964 to pursue an education and did not set foot in Afghanistan again for 38 years, due to constantly deepening political troubles at home. He wrote about his divided life in his memoir West of Kabul, East of New York. His work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Zyzzyva, Salon.com, Prism International, Portland Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Alternet, Edutopia and other magazines as well as websites such as Encarta.com, where he writes a monthly column. Yalda Asmatey was born in Kabul, Afghanistan shortly after her father was released from political imprisonment by the Afghan Communist government. She was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, graduated from U.C. Berkeley, and received her masters degree in public health at UCLA and has been working on her PhD in Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley. She has been traveling back and forth between Afghanistan and the United States since 2002. Currently she is living, working, and doing research in Kabul, Afghanistan., where she has accepted a one-year appointment to help develop a masters program in public health at the new American University there.

"I've been teaching my students that minorities need to speak for themselves, or else others will speak for them. In this fresh and valuable collection of 'voices,' Afghan Americans speak audaciously and felicitously for themselves. They give an eye-level view of escaping from the endless wars in their homeland and of making new homes in this country. They tell us what it means to be both Afghan and American." --Dr. Ronald Takaki, Professor of Ethnic Studies, U.C. Berkeley

"I started this book on Tuesday evening and found myself engrossed in the stories within minutes. I stole every spare moment within the following 24 hours to read more, learn more, connect more. When I finished the book on Wednesday at nearly midnight, three fiendish words urgently repeated in my mind: I WANT MORE! I want more of Asiyah's humor, more of Nadeem's poetry, more of Waheeda's deeply moving reflections that compelled me put the book down for a few minutes and say, "Wow." --Afrah Abdullah, a reader