Life Stories #43: Phyllis Chesler
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photo: Joan L. Roth
For this episode of Life Stories, I met Phyllis Chesler to discuss her new memoir, An American Bride in Kabul, which recounts how, after marrying her first husband in the early 1960s, she flew with him to meet his family in Afghanistan, where she was ordered to surrender her passport and forced into purdah under her mother-in-law’s murderous supervision. The months Chesler spent in this state of captivity before she was finally sent back to the United States—near the brink of death—are, she says, a foundational core of her subsequent feminist activism.
This is a story about which many readers may feel ambivalent, once they learn that Chesler continued to maintain a relationship with her ex-husband after her escape and their divorce, once he and his second wife fled to the United States following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. How, one may wonder, does a woman continue to regard her “jailer” favorably as a romantic dreamer, despite his misogynistic and anti-Semitic behavior? Chesler doesn’t shy away from such challenges during our conversation, explaining why she refuses to see herself as a victim—and how her experiences have taught her something about the threat to women in the Islamic world that, she believes, other feminists have yet to fully recognize.
Listen to Life Stories #43: Phyllis Chesler (MP3 file); or download this file directly by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). You can also subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released.
5 October 2013 | life stories |
Life Stories #42: Gary Burton
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photo: Jimmy Katz (Mack Ave Records)
In this episode of Life Stories, I chat with jazz musician Gary Burton about Learning to Listen. Introduced to the vibraphone at the age of six, Burton was already playing professionally by the time he left high school for the Berklee School of Music–with a record deal from RCA covering his tuition and living expenses. We talk about a professional career that’s spanned a half-century–from a sideman to George Shearing and then Stan Getz to leading his own combos, not to mention a classic duet album with Chick Corea. (In fact, this interview was recorded live at the Blue Note—the dressing room, but still!)
We talk about the changes he’s seen in the music industry and the jazz world, and about his status as one of the first “out” gay musicians in jazz… a status that was inadvertently accelerated during his Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross. (And, as he notes during our conversation, over the last 19 years it hasn’t done the slightest damage to his ability to get gigs.)
Listen to Life Stories #42: Gary Burton (MP3 file); or download this file directly by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). You can also subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released.
2 October 2013 | life stories |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
