There has been a groundswell of enthusiasm for HBS '06 graduate and reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon's forthcoming book The Dressmaker of Khair Khana about a woman who ran a covert dressmaking business under the Taliban in order to save her family.
Greg Mortenson, the author of Three Cups of Tea, said, "This is one of the most inspiring books I have ever read," and actress Angelina Jolie said the book will "show you a side of Afghanistan few ever see." HarperCollins publishes The Dressmaker of Khair Khana on March 15th. You can preorder the book here.
When the Taliban took control of Kabul, Kamela Sediqi and all the women of Kabul saw their lives transformed: Overnight they were banned from schools and offices and even leaving their front door on their own. The economy collapsed and young men left the city in search of work and security. Desperate to help her family and support her five brothers and sisters at home, Kamela began sewing clothes in her living room. Little did she know then that the tailoring venture she started to help her siblings would be the beginning of a dressmaking business that would create jobs and hope for 100 neighborhood women and mean the difference between survival and starvation for dozens of families like her own.
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the story of this unlikely breadwinner who became an entrepreneur under the Taliban. Former ABC News producer Gayle Tzemach Lemmon tells for the first time the story of the young women like Kamela who found opportunity amid the hardship and who kept their families going even as their world falls apart. Threatened by armed soldiers, nearly thrown in prison, confronted by moral dilemmas, Kamela had nowhere to turn and nothing to rely on but her own ingenuity, determination and grit. Overcoming terror, danger and intimidation, the resilient woman found a way forward for the sake of those she loved, and ultimately reshaped her own future.
"We're far more accustomed to—and comfortable with—seeing women portrayed as victims of war who deserve our sympathy rather than as resilient survivors who demand our respect," Lemmon writes. In this moving chronicle of courage and possibility, she aims to change the way we think, showing lives of inspiration and hope at a time of grim desperation—lives of women who, against the odds, supported themselves and their communities, and perhaps, helped save their nation as well.
