Bøker av Andrea Emily Stumpf

After growing up in Zanzibar as part of the ruling Omani Sultanate, Sayyida Salme, the daughter of the Sultan and his surie concubine Djilfidan, took a fateful step that shaped the rest of her life. She could not have imagined what challenges lay ahead. When she chose to follow her love and became Emily Ruete, she found herself on a path to self-exile, as she moved from East to West, South to North. Taking on a new culture, language, faith, even identity, she crossed borders only to find new barriers. And yet, she persisted, raising her children in Germany, this foreign land, defying norms and expectations. Above all, she stayed true to herself.Letters to the Homeland is a true story of an extraordinary life in the nineteenth century. Now, generations later, her great-great-granddaughter has produced an accurate translation of the author's own private manuscript. In a highly personal account that reveals struggles, anguish, fears, and faith, we encounter a life of adversity, rife with contrasts and constraints. We also see the power of self-expression from the self-taught power of the author's pen.As with Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, which the author published in 1886 and which is also newly translated in a companion book, readers can be inspired by observations and insights that still resonate today. Indeed, Sayyida Salme/Emily Ruete was so far ahead of her time that we, in the twenty-first century, can understand and appreciate her choices and convictions better than her contemporaries could.Let history surprise you; let her story inspire you - let her authentic voice speak to you.

Sayyida Salme lived a remarkable life in remarkable times and told the tale more than a century ago in her Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, the first book commercially published by an Arab woman. She was born in 1844 as a princess on the island of Zanzibar, daughter of the great Omani Sayyid Said bin Sultan and his Circassian slave Djilfidan. By the time she published her Memoirs in German in 1886, she had moved from Arab royalty amidst harem politics to the challenges of raising a family as a single mother in a foreign land. Her experience breached boundaries across color and culture lines, religions, countries, and hemispheres. Her exceptional path gave her exceptional insights that are still relevant. Sayyida Salme's life reflects a degree of determination and search for self-expression that still fascinate readers and motivate scholars around the world today.Not long after the original publication of the Memoirs, two translations appeared in 1888 and 1907. No longer copyrighted, these translations have been reprinted in various editions that are easily and cheaply available. But no matter the packaging, they all suffer from the same serious flaw: They are not entirely true to the original. In an effort to respect the author and uphold contemporary standards of authenticity, this new edition presents an accurate translation in readable English fit for the modern age. Written with great care by her great-great-granddaughter, it seeks to revive her original narrative in her authentic voice. Through these Memoirs, we can learn much about Sayyida Salme's time and place in history - and about ourselves.