Reviews/Interviews

Denver Post 2/18/2013 Denver author reaches out to help Pakistani women

2013-02-19T06:41:03Z

By Colleen O'Connor
The Denver Post

Women supporting different political parties shout slogans for the empowerment of Pakistan's election commission at a rally in Islamabad on Feb. 4. (Mian Khursheed, Reuters)

When Jacqueline St. Joan traveled to Pakistan to research"My Sisters Made of Light,"her novel about honor killings of women who shame their families, she stayed in people's homes, connected with human-rights activists and visited a women's shelter in Lahore.

But she went nowhere without a male guardian.

"You are considered to be fair game if you're not with a man," she said.

Women's need for protection can be acute in countries where violence against women is endemic, as it is in Pakistan. In her novel , she writes about three women who suffer the type of violence directed against real-life Pakistani women and girls —

Jacqueline St. Joan reads from her novel "My Sisters Made of Light" to a southeast Denver book club for women this month. St. Joan, a former judge and law professor, is donating half of the book's proceeds toward construction of a shelter in Pakistan for women escaping abuse. (AAron Ontiveroz, The Denver Post)

such asMalala Yousafzai, the teenagershot in the head by Taliban gunmen last year after she dared speak out in support of education for girls.

Since the book was published in 2010, St. Joan has spoken at more than 100 events hosted by libraries, book clubs, civic clubs and community centers across Colorado, and raised $19,000 to build a shelter in Pakistan for women with children who have no place to escape from abuse.

"Busy, professional women feel connected to these issues and care about these characters," said St. Joan, a Denver lawyer passionate about human rights. "That's one of the values of literature, that it can connect us to a world we don't experience because we don't walk in the shoes of someone on the other side of the world."

Two days after Malala made her first video appearance since being shot, St. Joan continued to convey the tales of violence against Pakistani women to people in Colorado.

She spoke at a book club in Cherry Creek — invited by Ellen Berrick, who met her at the book club

Malala Yousafzai, 15, was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for girls' education in Pakistan. She continues to recover. (APF file)

of former state Sen. Suzanne Williams. St. Joan was a huge hit.

"She explained the laws and customs to us in a way that made perfect sense," said Berrick. "She's given so much of herself to this cause, and I really admire that."

It started for St. Joan more than a decade ago, when she was washing dishes in a Denver kitchen with a Pakistani teacher after a small gathering of women had just watched a film about honor crimes in Pakistan.

"I'd heard the term but didn't really understand it," she said.

St. Joan listened as the woman revealed her secret rescue efforts in Pakistan to protect women in danger of beingkilled for something as simple as looking at a boy.

St. Joan had long been interested in women's rights. She had worked as a lawyer, county judge, children's rights advocate and domestic-violence activist. She also taught "Women and the Law" at Metropolitan State University of Denver, and in 2002, the conversation included women in the Muslim world, which is how she was introduced to the Pakistani teacher.

"When she showed that film to a small group at my home, I felt a mix of both my experience with family violence as a lawyer, and also my experience when my own parents essentially turned from me when I had an interracial marriage in 1967," she said. "My parents didn't know to handle that, and it did bring shame on the family as far as they were concerned."

Over years of research, she studied cases like that ofMukhtar Mai, who was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council as punishment for her brother, then 12, who was said to have offended a powerful clan by allegedly having an affair with one of its women.

To write about honor-crime trials in the Pakistani civil and Shariah courts, St. Joan immersed herself in the work ofAzizah al-Hibri, a legal scholar at the University of Richmondwho has written extensively on women's rights in Islam.

Honor killings are on the rise in Pakistan, having increased nearly 17 percent in the past three years: to 705 in 2012 from 604 in 2009, according to data fromthe Aurat Foundation, a women's advocacy organization in Pakistan.

To help, St. Joan is building a women's shelter in Pakistan with the help of the teacher she met a decade ago. Half the proceeds from book sales go toward the building fund. She is about $4,000 short.

"It will meet the needs coming from a variety of tragedies," she said. "Some women have been physically and emotionally abused for a long period of time, from beatings to burnings.

"Others could be accused of dishonoring a family or a community. A very precious life is in immediate danger."

Colleen O'Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp

Jacqueline St. Joan can be reached through the contact link at mysistersmadeoflight.com.

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Interview with Pattie Welek Hall on Joy Radio 30 minutes You can listen anytime.

2012-09-27T16:02:58Z

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joyradio/2012/09/27/jaqueline-st-joan-author-of-my-sisters-made-of-light

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2011-06-27T17:03:52Z

"Such a great choice...stayed up all night and finished it,.haven't done that in years! Could not put it down. Wonderfully woven. Everyone should read this book."

***

"This book haunts me -- I pick it up to reread sections; to revisit Nafeesa and Kulraj and the “she-lions of Punjab.” There is pain and there is beauty in it. St. Joan gives to Kulraj Singh words that fit all our stories, “Pleasure and pain are a set of robes a man must keep on wearing.”

Mainly, Adaila Prison is the stage where Baji Ajala’s story unfolds as she tells the stories of her life to a tough but curious prison director. Ajala’s stories are hard but beautifully told with the light of hope, although hope is frequently very dim.

The author’s descriptions, dialogues, and characters pull you into the story. You feel surrounded by the presence of the people of Pakistan. You also feel the anachronism of the ancient culture and the use of cell phones and the fact that one of the character’s favorite TV show is “Friends”.

I felt the presence of the culture of Pakistan as I did of Afghanistan in Khaled Hosseini’s books. However, I am awed that this book is written by an American. She must love the people and the place that is Pakistan with the love of a daughter of the soil. She seems to suffer with the plight of the women but also the harsh demands the culture has bred into the men. She sees how difficult it is for a man to see another way.

The main parallel I sense of this story and the stories of Khaled Hosseini is the sense of destiny or the life spiral that continues to move out as do ripples in water.

Roberta Hudlow, National Catholic Reporter

****star review on Barnes and Noble

2011-06-20T20:14:13Z

Aradanryl

This fictionalized story based on real facts gave me a peek into the culture of Pakistan. Overall, I found the book easy to read and it captured and held my attention. I really appreciated the maps and family tree at the beginning of the book. As I struggled with unfamiliar names and the jumping from time to time, it helped me stay focused on the story. I did wish for a small glossary of vocabulary so I didn't have to stop to look things up or just make a best guess and go on. I appreciated the tones of this book as it dealt with very sensitive issues. Although it does describe the various honor killings, they were handled respectfully and without unnecessary detail that would turn it lurid. Ms. St. Joan's depiction of the American journalist and her interaction with the community is noteworthy and, I suspect, very accurate. The reader's ability to think and come to healthy conclusions was also respected. It is truly unfortunate that the current political climate will keep me from visiting this vibrant country. I hope peace is restored between us all in my lifetime.

From Examiner.com/Denver May 8, 2011

2011-05-09T16:40:48Z

Jacqueline St. Joan on fighting the injustice of

'honor killing'

By don morreale

"Honor killing." It's a concept so alien, inhumane, and stupifyingly unjust that it's almost impossible to take it in. So naturally, when the issue first came to her attention, Jacqueline St. Joan felt compelled to do something about it.

"It's a cultural practice rooted in tribalism, patriarchy, and economics," she explains. "If a woman violates the sexual mores of the culture, her family becomes dishonored." A girl may be said to have violated her clan’s sexual mores for dressing inappropriately, or resisting an arranged marriage, or in one particularly egregious case, for chatting with a boy on Facebook. "To restore their honor, the family – usually a brother or the father – has to kill her."

St. Joan got involved in the issue almost by accident when, in December of 2002, she was invited to a party where the guest of honor was a 41-year-old Pakistani woman whom she calls "Aisha." For the past 25 years, Aisha had been teaching girls to read – itself a revolutionary act in a country where more than half the women are illiterate.

At the party, Aisha showed a video about honor crimes which, she said, accounted for an estimated 20% of all homicides in Pakistan. The practice, however, is not limited to Pakistan, nor is it exclusively Muslim. Christians and Hindus are also guilty of it, and in most Middle Eastern countries, perpetrators are seldom brought to justice.

Deep in conversation for the rest of the evening, the two women found they had much in common. Like Aisha, St. Joan had spent her entire life fighting for the rights of women and children. As a Denver County Court judge, 80% of the cases she heard had involved domestic abuse. As a DU law professor, she was able to secure a federal grant to allow her students, with the help of some mental health professionals, to represent victims of spousal abuse in court

There was, in addition, a deeply personal side to St. Joan’s interest in the honor killings question. "When I was 21, I married a black man," she says. "My parents didn’t speak to me or meet their grand kids for fifteen years. I had been punished for breeching the social mores."

Of her encounter with Aisha, she says, "There was a heart connection. We spoke the same language. We understood each other. We didn’t have to explain. When she told me that she’d helped a number of her students escape, I realized that here was the Harriet Tubman of Pakistan. I knew then that I had to write her story."

Aisha agreed, and St. Joan set to work immediately. "I’d never written a novel before," she says. "So I broke it down into manageable segments. I’d write twenty pages, and every two weeks we’d meet to go over the manuscript." To protect Aisha from reprisals back home, St. Joan fictionalized the story.

In January of 2004, she went to Pakistan to gain some firsthand knowledge of the country. "I called it my ‘human rights tour,'" she says. "I visited schools, human rights offices, and bonded labor camps. I interviewed a couple in hiding, and talked with women who’d escaped families bent on killing them. I came away with a lot of stories and an enormous respect for the people there willing to risk their lives to stand up for their rights."

She also emerged with a more nuanced picture of the country and its people. "There’s something very beautiful about a culture where people stop to pray five times a day," she says. "I found them to be gentle and soft spoken. I wanted to do justice to that in my book."

Her book, My Sisters Made of Light, was finished in 2006 and published in 2010. Since then St. Joan has been touring the country both to promote the book and to raise awareness of the plight of women and children in the Middle East.

"The book is really an extension of what I’ve been doing for a long time," she says. "I have a strong sense of injustice and a deep need to cure it."

Jacqueline St. Joan will speak at Pomegranate Place, 750 Clarkson Street, Denver, on Wednesday, May 11 at 6:30 pm. Phone 303-832-2222.
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Readers Respond

2011-04-09T23:09:16Z

just finished the book. great job! it's heart-breaking, and yet hopeful. you end with hope, and that's good. a great story. gripping and revealing. and i love how you end not demonizing the muslim faith, but reinterpreting the koran to demonstrate a rooted love ethic that male-dominated societies have ignored

Now available on Page Readers: http://pagereadersbtr.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-sisters-made-of-light-review-by.html

and SOON TO APPEAR IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW:

My Sisters Made of Light is a brilliant book made of beauty and an honest look at brutality, deep insights and soaring lyricism. It is fiction based on the harsh realities of the culturally and socially accepted honor crimes against women in Pakistan. We watch in horror as a father lights a disobedient daughter on fire. We read in disbelief as a mother escorts a hired assassin to a meeting with her daughter and watches as he shoots her child dead. We hold our breath as a Muslim woman escapes her family to marry a Sikh man whom she adores. Theirs is a love of historic significance. The author encapsulates a long and bloody history into unforgettable images:

In 1958 the air was still sour with the stench of the slaughters that had occurred eleven years earlier when the British ran like dogs and India cracked. The blade that slashed the map also partitioned the bodies of the people, etching fear in their bellies and revenge in their hearts. . . . . . If a trainful of Hindus was murdered by Muslims from Lahore (and they were), then a trainful of Muslims would be murdered by Sikhs and Hindus from Amritstar (and they were). Entire families were butchered and their body parts were delivered by horseback to their villages. The people emptied baskets of breasts and pails of penises onto the ground - even the stubs of baby penises with scrotums like tiny figs. The soil was soaked with all the lost futures and when it was done, when the trauma finally subsided to abide in the bodies of the people, they had to plant seeds in and eat the fruit of that same earth. Sikhs and Muslims alike knew the taste of each other’s blood well and they kept to their own.

Kulrag and Nafeesa in London. Romeo and Juliet in Verona. A Muslim and a Sikh in Pakistan. All of history conspired against them, but no matter. They would find a new way.

This book is about the courageous women who risk their lives to teach a new way to the young women of Pakistan. Interspersed in the rich mix of their stories are passages of pure poetry:

I knelt before the shrine for long periods. I read no textbooks. Poured no oil on the doorstep. Took no milk in my tea. No tea. No dusty sandals. No laundry. No letters. No toothbrush. No prayers. No songs. No memories. No soft sisters. No tough sisters. No purpose. No me. For days and days I faded away.

The author has sought and achieved recognition and success in the fields of law and literature in order to further her agenda of making the world safer for women. She donates half the proceeds from sales of the book to a grassroots organization building a safe shelter for women and children escaping abuse. Even if it were not a great read, buying this book helps people in need. The bonus to the reader is that it IS a great read.

Sandra Shwayder Sanchez, reviewer

author of Stillbird, Three Novellas, A Mile in These Shoes

www.thewessexcollective.com

"Loved your book, especially the parents' love story and, biggest surprise, the prison superintendent. She and the guru-like father got into my heart."

"I'm enjoying your book. Hard to get into at first, with its grim subject matter, but powerful, with wonderful descriptions and uplifting sense of passion, for justice, yours and the characters'. I really loved the parents' story, the Sikh father and the "sloppy Muslim" mother. I can't believe you left us hanging there, at the Shalimar gardens!"

"I stayed up late to finish your book, tearing running down my eyes and unable to stop. You write so well and tell the story powerfully. Thanks so much for sharing these women's lives. We hope to pass the word to all we know. May the book travel wide..."

“I wanted to let you know that your book was my book club's selection a couple of months ago and is a future selection for a second group I'm in. . . .The reason that I'm emailing you is that the first group wants to ask if the scene in which Faisah and Lea share the sugar cane and sleep on the roof has lesbian implications.

The book was received quite well. The ending was met with some skepticism as being too simple and happy with no one "paying" for the escape. I personally thought it was good and especially so for being a first novel. I also learned a lot.”

"I absolutely loved the book--very powerful--told by families one can relate to. Excellent character development, and I learned a lot."

"I LOVED your book - very moving and captivating. Well done."

“. . . I had begun My Sisters Made of Light having been pulled in by the strong cover and the title. I was totally enamored from beginning to end--the story, the geography, the culture. And having come from a family of sisters, I loved seeing how a mother's passion could affect her female offspring in such a significant way. . ."

Interviews

2011-04-09T23:05:45Z

LISTEN to my recent interiew on public radio with Ryan Warner about the novel, honor crimes in Pakistan and the safe shelter in Pakistan.

http://www.cpr.org/article/legacy-kcfr-95#load_category_page|colorado_matters

LISTEN to discussion of honor crimes in Pakistan and to my reading of a short excerpt from my novel, My Sisters Made of Light from public radio broadcast WAMU-FM, Washington, D.C. on internet website: interfaithradio.org. Click on Play Show and drag the timer to 22 minutes to hear my portion.

LISTEN to my interview with Craig Barnes about women in Pakistan for KSFR-FM, Santa Fe public radio. Available online: Go to www.craigbarnes.com, look for Radio Interviews, click on "Listen" and scroll down to find "St. Joan."

Cut and paste this radio interview--"Tuesdays with Maureen"

voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=50238

Published Reviews

2011-04-09T23:04:22Z

By Susan O'Neill, author, Don't Mean Nothing

I met the author in Manhattan by pure chance and, as I usually do when I meet an author, I bought her book on the spot. I figured I'd read it...I dunno...sometime. I have a busy life and a huge list of books I'm slowly eating my way through, and this would take its place in the back of the line.

The subway back to Brooklyn from Manhattan that night was deadly slow, so I pulled the novel out of my bag and--what the hey--started to read. Just a taste before I hit home, where I'd stick it on the shelf for now and... When I looked up again, it was my stop; I had to scramble to get out before the doors slammed shut.

Three days later, I'd finished this well-written, fascinating interloper. It's an important book, one that places a vital issue squarely on the table, makes it understandable and sympathetic, more than a sad fact of life in a far-away country. It's also a gripping read, hard to turn away from, hard to discount. Or to put on the shelf for later. The characters live and breathe; they are weak, brave, human; they can get under your skin and keep you awake at night.

In My Sisters Made of Light, Jacqueline St. Joan has taken up the mandate that her protagonist's mother gave to her daughter: Teach Them. This she does, to her credit, deftly; she "shows, not tells" the terrible truth: Honor Killings might take place half a world away, but they strike at the heart of woman's position in the human race. When any religion or cultural system is twisted to force subservience, shame and violence upon half its population, Humanity in general can not consider itself whole and healthy. Such horrors as these stain the considerable good in holy books and contort the images of Prophets and God Itself.

Read this book: it's good. And don't just borrow it: buy it, because St. Joan has pledged half her profits to help shelter victims of abuse in Pakistan. It's the least we can do for our sisters. Amazon.com

Read the whole story (click on this link for a web-optimized PDF) Sing Out, Sister. It was published in Pasatiempo, New Mexican's Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment & Culture

THE FIRST OFFICIAL REVIEW: elevatedifference.com

Read the review here