Beautician and the Beasts

Attention, ladies. Next time you’re getting guff from your man about an expensive salon visit, hand him a copy of Deborah Rodriguez’s Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil, a story that chronicles the author’s relief work in Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban. He’ll surely shut his yap after he reads how Rodriguez’s beauty school changed Afghan women’s lives for the better.

A hairdresser from Michigan, Rodriguez found her calling after she discovered that the Taliban banned beauty parlors. Not only did she instruct how to cut, color, and style, but she also became a trusted confidante to her students. Only an American with a spirit for opportunism could teach autonomy to the oppressed.

Rodriguez reads from and signs copies of the New York Times bestselling tome.