Deborah Kapchan is an American folklorist and ethnographer who’s written a new memoir, Taking Leave, about her complicated relationship with three different major religions: Judaism and Christianity, which formed her as a kid in New York, as well as Sufi Islam, which intrigued her during a phase of her life in Morocco. I was interested in this book in part because Somalia is also a Sufi nation, at least on the surface, and like my book Taking Leave ends in a rejection of tribalism.
Resources:
Taking Leave, by Deborah Kapchan
Deborah’s website
Gnawa music, as recorded by Paul Bowles
The Desert and the Sea, by Michael Scott Moore
