Key Facts
full title ·
A Border Passage: From Cairo to America—A Woman's Journey
author · Leila Ahmed
type of work · Memoir
genre · Nonfiction
language · English
time and place written · 1990s, United States
date of first publication · 1999
publisher · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
narrator · Leila Ahmed
point of view · The narrator tells the story in first person, describing her thoughts
and feelings about events in her life, though she does give a broad overview of
the historical context.
tone · Critical, descriptive, poetic, personal
tense · Past
setting (time) · 1940s–1980s
setting (place) · Cairo, Egypt; Cambridge, England; Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates;
the United States
protagonist · Leila Ahmed
major conflict · Ahmed struggles to define her identity in the world.
rising action · Ahmed's education and increasing awareness of her identity as an Arab
and Egyptian in the world open her eyes to new perspectives and create new
problems in her search for her identity.
climax · Ahmed comes to the United States to establish herself as a women's
studies scholar.
falling action · Ahmed decides to write about her Egyptian heritage in a memoir.
themes · The existence of two Islams; the richness of cultural pluralism; the
politics of language; the prevalence of colonial consciousness
motifs · Place; cultural displacement; communities of women
symbols · The harem; angels; music
foreshadowing · As this is a work of nonfiction, there is no real foreshadowing per se.
Instead, repeated motif and symbols, such as music, serve to reinforce the
connections that the author is making between events and experiences.
