Dynamic Duo

Unbowed: a Memoir by Wangari Muta Maathai
Iran Awakening by Shirin Ebadi

Global level prizes like the MacArthur genius grants announced today or the Nobels bring book lovers like me a world away the gift of engaging with truly creative minds and souls. I had never heard of Shirin Ebadi before she won the Nobel in 2003, nor of the 2004 laureate Wangari Maathai. Nor had they heard of each other, though their efforts are now joined in the Nobel Women's Initiative. Their stories here made available to a distant readership are so remarkably similar. Their global readers form a key element of protection: neither woman will be clapped into jail again without the whole world watching.

Professionally qualified at the highest levels of their chosen fields, microbiology for Maathai and the judiciary for Ebadi, both women hit the glass ceiling hard and bounce back. Unbowed, Maathai's story, traces her lateral move from university faculty to development official and ultimately to Parliament. Iran Awakening begins from Ebadi's loss of her seat on the bench as a result of the 1979 revolution and follows her through a dynamic career as a human rights lawyer and advocate for political reform, which now in 2009 may be leading her also to seek office. One comes from secular urban Teheran, the other from the thatched huts of a Kikuyu village, yet the narratives are nearly identical.

Both of these are good reads, well written, fine choices for days on which we may want some inspiration to keep on when we've hit the wall ourselves or crashed once again into that proverbial ceiling.