REVIEW | Yemen, What Everyone Needs to Know
AUTHOR: ASHER ORKABY
ISBN: 0190932279
FIRST PUBLISHED: JAN 4th 2021
PAGES: 192 PAGES
EDITION LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
I read this book for the From And About Asia Reading Project.
For the month of Yemen, July 2022
This is a nonfiction book about Yemen, covering Yemen from the ancient time of Noah to its current affairs, including the ongoing Yemeni Civil War that started in 2014. This book was published in 2021, so it's fairly up to date.
The book is very informative, it covers a variety of topics in Yemeni history chronologically, including religions, history in different historical eras, modern Yemen and its social structure, noticeably agriculture and economy, education and society, minorities, and women's rights.
Yemen, image from Unsplash @yamany88
Depending on the topic and the knowledge base of the reader (in this case, me), some chapters can be dry and packed with information. Personally, I had a hard time following the different streams of powers in the history in the first chapter, Regions, Sects, and Tribes. However, I enjoyed the chapters that talk about societal issues the most, for example, minorities and women's rights, and education and economy.
The thing I liked the most about this book is, that every chapter started with a Yemeni poem. At first, I thought it was a matter of formatting and the author's preference. But when it comes to the chapter talking about Yemeni culture, I was so impressed to find out that in Yemen, every big event or celebration started with a poem. There are no important things that don't have a poet. Poetry and oral history have been a big part of Yemeni culture, and this book implanted this tradition in each chapter. It's a beautiful thing to discover while reading.
Another impressive detail that showed the author's appreciation of Yemeni culture is, in the chapter talking about minorities, the book mentioned a music video that represents Yemeni Jewish culture called "Habib Kalbi" (Love of My Heart), which is a song based on a mournful Yemeni folk song. Although the three women in the music video grew up in Israel and have never been to Yemen, they are inspired by Yemeni women's chanting.
Yemen and its World Heritage mudbrick buildings. Image from Pixabay @jones814
I also liked that the book was not only presenting facts to the reader but also bringing up discussions that are at the heart of each chapter. However, because of the author's background, many of the issues that the book brought up are American-centered. And sometimes the examples he used to compare things to are also very American. For instance, he would compare Yemen's international relationship with bordering countries to the relationship between America and Mexico. Which is fairly well-known, but it also shows that the target audience of this book is American based. Nonetheless, everyone has their focus and specialties, and the comparisons don't impact the arguments the book is making a lot. so it's not a big issue for the book.
Overall, this is a very good overview of Yemen, especially for people who know a little about this historical country. I learnt a lot from this book and would recommend it to people who want to know more about Yemen.
