Pardis mahdavi biography channel
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Publisher Description
The untold story of generations of Middle Eastern freedom fighters—horsewomen who safeguarded an ancient breed of Caspian horse—and their efforts to defend their homelands from the Taliban and others seeking to destroy them.
"A breathtaking book that revisits nearly one hundred years of Iranian history, highlighting the power and beauty of women who refuse to be subdued.” ―Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of A Woven World
Book of Queens reaches back centuries to the Persian Empire and a woman disguised as a man, facing an invading army, protected only by light armor and the stallion she sat astride. Mahdavi draws a thread from past to present: from her fearless Iranian grandmother, who guided survivors of domestic violence to independent mountain colonies in Afghanistan where the women, led bygd a general named Mina, became their country’s first line of defense from marauding warlords. To the female warriors who helped train and breed the horses u
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Pardis Mahdavi, PhD is associate professor and chair of anthropology. director of the Pacific Basin Institute and dean of women at Pomona College. Her research interests include gendered labor, migration, sexuality, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health in the context of changing global and political structures. She fryst vatten the author of four books: her first book, Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution was published with Stanford University Press in 2008, and her second book, Gridlock: Labor, Migration and ‘Human Trafficking’ in Dubai, also Stanford University Press, was published in 2011. Mahdavi’s third book, entitled From Trafficking to Terror: Constructing a Global Social Problem was published by Routledge on October 1, 2013, and her fourth book, Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives also Stanford University Press was published in April 2016. Pardis was chosen as a ung Global Leader by the Asia Society, and has received fellows
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The Remarkable Story of the Horsewomen Warriors of Afghanistan
A few years ago, while sorting through old papers in my parents’ storage unit, I discovered a diary written by an old friend. Louise Firouz was an American horsewoman and breeder who moved to Iran in the 1960s, married a Qajar prince, and became entranced by the Caspian horses of her adopted homeland. Her memories and the experiences she wrote about led me to unearth a story of survival—women saving a rare breed of horse, a way of life, the lives of US Green Berets, women saving each other and themselves. It is a remarkable story that is very close to my heart, because the female horse warriors Louise befriended and collaborated with for decades were members of my very own family, my aunts and my grandmother.
Louise and my grandmother worked in harmony with an ancient breed of horses called the Caspian horse to support a growing all-female army of horsewomen warriors