For Bahrain, I read Yummah by Sarah A. Al Shafei, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone doing a Read Around the World project.

The heroine of this book is Khadeeja, and Yummah is the nickname given to Khadeeja by her grandchildren. This book appears to be the fictionalized story of Khadeeja’s life, as written by one of her grandchildren.

The story begins with Khadeeja’s arranged marriage at the age of 12 and presents her marriage as a fairytale love story. Khadeeja falls in love with her husband the first time she looks at him and continues to adore and cherish him as the best of men, even when he ditches her and moves to Dubai when she is pregnant with their ninth child. If Bahrain has a Hallmark channel, I imagine this is the sort of story it would feature.

I have really struggled to compose my thoughts about Yummah, and have left this post in drafts for a week now, because my opinions about this book are a bit contradictory.

On the one hand, I feel like I should be critical of this book because it romanticizes the story of a child bride. Khadeeja marries at the age of twelve! That is ABUSE. I have been thinking about this for days, worrying that I am not being sensitive to a different culture with different social and cultural norms. But, just because something is the social norm within a culture does not mean it is right. I believe in my core that subjecting a girl to marriage at the age of twelve is abuse.

But I’m still glad that my Read Around the World quest brought me to Yummah. Even though it made my inner feminist cringe, it also gave me a wonderful glimpse into life in Bahrain. Was it a romanticized glimpse? Yes! But even though Yummah was presented as a fairytale, it inadvertently shined a light on the problems with societies, cultures and religions that teach women to be subservient to men.

This novel touched me deeply. Not, I believe, in the way the author intended, but it reminded me that so many women in the world do not yet understand that their worth does not hinge on their subservience to a man. I am so privileged to be living in the United States in the twenty-first century, and I am even more privileged to have a husband who encourages me to dream big and not worry so much about the housework. Sometimes, from my privileged perspective, it seems like feminism has done its work.

But there is work still to be done.

I am on an epic journey to read a book by an author from every country in the world in alphabetical order. When I finish a book, I often think, Damn, I want to read everything this author has written, but if I do that, I’ll never finish this quest. I’m going to keep track of my favorite authors here for future reading ambitions.

1. Ismail Kadare (Albania)
2. Assia Djebar (Algeria): I definitely want to finish her Algerian Calvacade. The book I read, Fantasia, was so lush, I could see someone using this book as an amazing starting point for a college thesis. (And if you write that thesis, send it to me!)
3. Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua and Barbuda):
4. Narine Abgaryan (Armenia): I’ll read anything she writes. Even a shopping list.
5. Kate Grenville (Australia)
6. Ella Leya (Azerbaijan): but Leya is primarily a jazz musician, so not sure if she has more novels she wants to write.
7. Janice Lynn Mather (The Bahamas)
8. Taslima Nasrin (Bangladesh)
9. Cherie Jones (Barbados). She’s also an attorney and the book I read was her debut, so I really hope she writes more. LOTS MORE.
10. Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus). 4/5/24 – I’m not quite halfway done with Secondhand Time but already this feels like one of the best books I’ve ever read, and damn, I want to inhale to everything she’s written. 4/11/24 – I finished the book yesterday and Alexievich is now one of my favorite authors of all time. Absolutely incredible.
11. Jacqueline Harpman (Belgium). Hopefully more of her books are translated into English though honestly, I will be happy to reread I Who Have Never Known Men every few years for the rest of my life.