Letters From Kabul, 1966-1968

About the Book

Letters from Kabul is a unique page-turning memoir. Janice Minott paints an intimate portrait of an everyday Afghanistan just entering the twentieth century, its peace soon to be shattered by decades of military conflict. The author's humorous and reflective letters make us privy to what the Muslim culture teaches one ordinary American family. Her poignant details of a culture vastly different from our own promise to awaken us to new perspectives as well. The lilting rhythms of Janice's days draw us into Kabul with both zest and profundity. From picking up a family and moving them halfway around the world to acclimating to a world apart, from ventures into the maze of Kabul's Old City bazaars to bone-rattling jeep rides into the Hindu Kush, from an on-the-fly encounter with a friendly smuggler to the heart-warming hospitality of Afghan neighbors: if you've ever fantasized about the reality of living in the mountainous kingdom of Afghanistan. Letters from Kabul offers you an open ticket. Janice writes generously from her unique vantage point as a revolutionary New Englander. Teaching English to a class of adult Afghan women is her passport out of the stifling world of Foreign Service teas and coffees. While her husband oversees the nationwide Peace Corps volunteers, Janice undergoes vast personal transformation. Such transformation ends up being an unexpected gift.

About the Author

Born in the autumn of 1925 in the mining area of Pennsylvania, Janice Minott was raised from age four in Portland, Maine, in a multigenerational household presided over by grandmother Ida Minott, a woman of steady wisdom. This house held unique mementos from the sea voyages of great-grandfather Jabez Minott, who sailed many times around Cape Horn not only to San Francisco but to Shanghai, Sydney, and Calcutta. From an early age, Janice fantasized about visiting exotic lands and meeting people of diverse cultures. Her first foreign adventure included spending a summer with a work-study project in Jamaica. Women of her generation were destined for smaller things, but Janice moved out of Maine to New York City and unexpectedly received the funds to finish her college degree. After graduation from the University of Maine, she worked for several years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the Quakers' American Friends Service Committee, recruiting foreign students for international seminars and work camps. At 28 she married a Jewish refugee in a traditional Quaker ceremony, pledging to go with him to a Third World country to work for peace. Three children later, she found herself in a hardship post in Central Asia an unforgettable experience that forms the basis for Letters from Kabul. Today she resides in the Catskills in upstate New York in a small spiritual community where in season she putters in her garden watched over by her canine companion Sadie, an amazing hunting dog who adopted her seven years ago. Her travels now are confined to a yearly visit to Maine to her beloved Peaks Island, where she can watch her granddaughters swinging from the same tree she did next to the hundred-year-old family cottage.