What was weird is that because the rules for women’s behavior are so strict, I felt like I was learning about a culture from long ago. I could have been reading this for an anthropology course, and I was thirsty to learn everything I could. At the same time, of course, I was thoroughly appalled by the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. The whole time I was reading, I became more and more fascinated to learn details of a culture I knew very little about. I know I wouldn’t have had the nerve to go up against the authorities I would have been terrified of the consequences. People have called her the Muslim version of Rosa Parks. What shines through is her courage and perseverance to better the conditions for women in her country. She wasn’t in jail a long time, but her story was all the more sad because she had a young son whose mom suddenly disappeared into the night. One evening they took her from her house, interrogated her for hours, and then threw her in jail, with feces underfoot and cockroaches in her bed. There is no law that forbids women from driving, but the religious police are powerful.
This is a gripping true story told by Manal, a woman in Saudi Arabia who got arrested by the “religious police” for driving while female. Her memoir is a remarkable celebration of resilience in the face of tyranny, the extraordinary power of education and female solidarity, and the difficulties, absurdities, and joys of making your voice heard.
Writing on the cusp of history, Manal offers a rare glimpse into the lives of women in Saudi Arabia today. That’s when the Saudi kingdom’s contradictions became too much to bear: she was labeled a slut for chatting with male colleagues, her teenage brother chaperoned her on a business trip, and while she kept a car in her garage, she was forbidden from driving down city streets behind the wheel.ĭaring to Drive is the fiercely intimate memoir of an accidental activist, a powerfully vivid story of a young Muslim woman who stood up to a kingdom of men-and won. By her twenties she was a computer security engineer, one of few women working in a desert compound that resembled suburban America. But what a difference an education can make. In her adolescence, she was a religious radical, melting her brother’s boy band cassettes in the oven because music was haram: forbidden by Islamic law. Manal al-Sharif grew up in Mecca the second daughter of a taxi driver, born the year fundamentalism took hold. A ferociously intimate memoir by a devout woman from a modest family in Saudi Arabia who became the unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women’s right to drive.
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