Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood - A Memoir of Growing Up Female in a Muslim World - Hardcover

This unique book throws open a window on a world unknown to most Westerners. The word Meyebela, girlhood, was coined by Taslima Nasrin because no precise term existed in her native language for a female's experience of childhood. This seemingly small omission speaks volumes about the fate of millions of girls and women living in societies in which females are treated as second-class citizens. Renowned Bengali dissident Nasrin is an exception. Precocious and well educated, she managed to pursue careers as a physician and a writer, and in telling her own story is able to speak for others. In prose that is at once lyrical and vivid, Nasrin takes the reader on an unforgettable journey to a place and time that will seem quite distant to the Western reader but which remains little changed today, and for millions of girls and women is the only world they know.