The Muslim Journeys presentations are wrapping up next week after several months of discussions on novel readings about the female experience in the Muslim world. The events, organized by the Wyoming Humanities Council in conjunction with the Albany County Public Library and the Laramie County Library System, have been hosting events in Laramie and Cheyenne.
Clara Keyt, a discussion leader in Cheyenne and Ph.D. in Public History, teaches at both University of Wyoming and Colorado State University. Keyt believes the older set of participants, usually around 50 years old, benefited the discussions.
“This is where you really get the benefit of having an older audience,” Keyt said. “They are able to relate the themes of some of these fictional books set in the Middle East to life situations that everyone deals with.”
Nichol Bondurant, a discussion leader in Laramie, also recognized the value of an older audience as most of her attendees were older than her. Bondurant noticed that this audience of 50-plus-year-old women had a good knowledge base of Islam and of what happened in the Iranian Revolution.
“Most people were older than me so they had experienced from a United States perspective when the Ayatollah took over,” Bondurant said. “I would say that this is a group of people who were more aware of what specifically happened in Iran and Islam in general than a lot of people that I meet in other scenarios.”
The novels involved in this series focused mainly on the female Muslim experience. Keyt said the issues women in the novels faced were human issues audience members could relate to, being women themselves, and were not necessarily unique only to Muslim women.
“Because of their experiences you are really dealing with human experience, like how you keep your family together in economic troubles or how do you work with your teenage daughter who doesn’t want to value what you have,” said Keyt
The books also talked about the unique experience of Muslim women.
“The author helps the reader understand that, yes there is a separate culture, yes there are some obvious problems with discrimination and particularly gender discrimination,” said Keyt.
Keyt said the books conveyed that even though women in these societies may be at a disadvantage, they still find ways to obtain power.
“It also unpacks this single dimensional idea of a woman who is not able to think for herself, not able to make decisions and it really shows how women, even when they are in situations where they are not equal, they are still able to access power and they are still able to control some things and to have a tremendous influence over their family even when the political system and laws are completely dominated by men,” said Keyt.
As serious as these novels may sound, Bondurant said humor and art were also incorporated. She led the very first book discussion in Laramie and when talking about the novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, she noted the author’s sense of humor.
“As I am telling all of this heavy stuff it is also funny,” said Bondurant. “She uses humor, she uses graphic design and graphic art.”
The Muslim Journeys series provides Wyoming communities the opportunity to experience the life of a Muslim woman in the Islamic world through its novel discussions. The series final discussions are on Tuesday, May 6 in Cheyenne and Thursday, May 8 in Laramie.
