The Woman Who Fell From The Sky by Jennifer Steil

From The Week of February 06, 2011

It was a surreal experience to read this book while protests in Yemen threaten to topple Ali Abdullah Saleh from power; for The Woman Who Fell From The Sky concerns, in whole, the trials and tribulations of an American woman's attempts to bring the standards of Western journalism to a Yemeni newspaper. Though her efforts to teach Journalism 101 to her reporters has its ups and downs, Ms. Steil has totally succeeded in penning a fantastic memoir of her years living in this particularly enchanting Arab dictatorship.

Yemen practices what we might charitably call a faux democracy. While all the instruments of representative government exist, corruption rules the day. President Saleh maintains his position through the liberal use of force against those who disagree with him. Though Yemen has a notional free press, the reality on the ground is far more pragmatic, with the publishers of newspapers well aware of the lines that must not be crossed. Any criticism of the government will be swiftly and mercilessly punished.

This is the country into which Ms. Steil falls. Invited to leave her cozy New York life for an uncertain and problematic existence as chief editor of a Yemeni newspaper, Ms. Steil seizes the opportunity for adventure. But it's not until she arrives in Yemen that she realizes she must not only publish a newspaper, she must teach everyone at the newspaper how a paper is published. Confronted by censorship, sexism and institutional arrogance written into the Yemeni DNA, Ms. Steil soldiers forth with admirable doggedness, leaving as profound a mark on her fellows at the Yemen Observer as the country itself leaves on her. For she makes clear in her account that she's fallen in love with this most crazy, and yet oddly lovable, Arab nation.

While this memoir speaks eloquently to the weighty issue of press freedom inside a dictatorship, it's Ms. Steil's fondness for Yemeni culture that makes her effort here memorable. She unreservedly throws herself, headlong, into a world she barely knows, seeking out knowledge and experience with an admirable absence of prejudice or judgement. Her love for the people she befriends seems as genuine as her antipathy towards the blockheads at the newspaper who ignorantly squander the resources around them. Yes, Ms. Steil devotes too much time to her love life which matters a lot more to her than it does to her readers, but this flaw did little to diminish my enjoyment of a book which taught me as much about a culture as it did the subject. A rare feat. (4/5 Stars)