LITERATURE + LECTURES

Blue Willow Bookshop presents Deborah Rodriguez, Tuesday, January 25  at 7pm. We welcome Deborah Rodriguez (author of Kabul Beauty School) for a return visit. She will be in town to discuss and sign her new novel, A Cup of Friendship.

Her fiction debut is as compelling as real life: the story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there—thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship.

Sunny is an energetic American living in Kabul; her pride and joy is the coffee shop she runs for expats, whose stories filter through her daily life. When Yazmina, a young woman from a remote village, is kidnapped, then left on a city street pregnant and alone, Sunny gives her a home - but all Yazmina wants is to find a way to rescue her sister from the same fate.

Into the coffee shop, and Yazmina¹s and Sunny¹s lives, comes Candace, a wealthy American who uses her connections to make a difference in the women¹s circumstances, then ends up needing help herself; Isabel, a determined journalist with a secret that might keep her from the biggest story of her life; and Halajan, the den mother, whose long-hidden love affair breaks all the rules - and threatens to turn her own son against her. As these women gather and discover that there¹s more to one another than meets the eye, they¹ll form a bond that will change not only their own lives but the lives of an entire community.

The Author Writes:
"When I was fifteen, I went to beauty school because I figured that I could put myself through college by doing hair. At that time though, I didn’t want to be a hairdresser. I saw how hard my mother worked and how tired she was at night, and besides, I had decided then that my calling was in music. I took piano lessons since I was five and although my mother wanted me to take ballet, too, that only lasted a day--I was too big, couldn’t balance myself on one leg, and couldn’t fit into a tutu. But I loved music and stuck with it. In high school, I played the piano, organ, guitar and trumpet. I liked singing, too, and thought I was good at it, so I enrolled at John Brown College in Arkansas as a vocal performance major. But when I got there and sang along with other students, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t cut out for it. I developed nodules on my vocal chords; when I sang Italian opera, I sounded like James Brown singing Italian opera. So I tried my hand at becoming a band director, but after many embarrassing moments in class, it was clear that I couldn’t keep a beat well enough to lead a band.

So I returned to Michigan and worked in my mother’s salon. I got married when I was young and stupid and had two beautiful boys, Noah and Zachary. My husband and I were both young and stupid, and we soon got restless and bored with each other. I remember crying in my mother’s living room at 26, and asking her what was wrong with me. I had everything a woman was supposed to want—a husband, children, a good job, a nice house and car, but I was miserable. I guess it’s no surprise that I was soon a single mom.

Turning point - One day, one of the salon customers talked about the medium-security prison opening up in the area. I had wondered what it would be like to work someplace where there were actually health insurance and benefits, and this customer told me that the prison was offering both. So I applied for a job and planned to do hair on the side. Since I hadn’t finished my bachelor’s degree, the only position I qualified for was prison guard. How bad could it be, I thought... Turned out it was pretty bad.

It wasn’t long until I quit the prison and on the day I left an inmate said “Good luck, Miss Debbie, you’re going to have a good life now.”

The good life. What did that mean to me? I liked traveling, but I’d quickly lose interest with the tourist destinations my friends talked me into and would wind up spending time in areas the tourists shunned. When I went to Jamaica, I was bored with jets skis and drinking margaritas on the beach of a walled-off hotel, so I grabbed a bus into town. I wound up meeting a twenty-year old mother with five kids who invited me to her home where we ate soup made with not much more than fish bones. I spent the week visiting her, bringing diapers and groceries—and that’s where I felt content.

That was when I started doing what I like to call “ vacation with a purpose.”

Beyond labels - For as long as I can remember, I’ve been called “Crazy Deb”. It was Crazy Deb with the weird hairstyles, long nails and all that movie-star makeup; Crazy Deb with the boat and the all-night parties; Crazy Deb who worked in the prison and was even friends with some of the inmates. You’d hear, “I’m getting my hair cut next week—you know, by Crazy Deb.” I soon became Crazy Deb, the one who traveled around the world to work on humanitarian projects. My first time in India, I traveled from village to village with a friend helping people put in new wells that could sustain them through a drought as their old wells had dried up.

When I finally left for Afghanistan in May 2002, I had no idea that I’d still be there in a couple of years doing spiral perms and introducing the art of foiling. I had taken emergency and disaster relief training two months before 9-11 with a nonprofit organization called the Care For All Foundation and had pleaded for a place on the first team that the organization sent to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. When we arrived in the country, it was worse than I could have imagined. Everything seemed broken - buildings, roads, homes, families and individuals.

Thus began the most unlikely story of a lost hairdresser in Kabul, who helped build a beauty school for women and a life of her own amidst the rubble. It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was a life I loved nonetheless, in a salon where all women were welcome, regardless of hairstyle, color or baggage. The rest isn’t just history, better yet, it’s theirs and my story."

In order to go through the signing line and meet Deborah Rodriguez for book personalization, you must purchase A Cup of Friendship from Blue Willow Bookshop. If you cannot attend the event and would like a signed copy of A Cup of Friendship, please call the shop at (281) 497 8675.