Kim Barnes: "In the Kingdom of Men"
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-07-18/kim-barnes-kingdom-men
"I'm a barefoot girl from red-dirt Oklahoma, and all the marble floors in the world will never change that." That's the first line in a new novel by award-winning author Kim Barnes. It's the story of a young woman who leaves the dusty farmlands of 1960s Oklahoma to follow her husband to the oil fields of Saudi Arabia where lucrative work awaits. Like her heroine, Barnes grew up dirt poor and in a conservative Christian home. Her family members left this life for jobs in Saudi Arabia. Drawing on their memories and years of research, Barnes writes of a woman coming of age on an American oil compound in Saudi Arabia. She joins Diane to talk about a woman's quest for knowledge in a male-dominated world in her new book, "In the Kingdom of Men."
Guests
Kim Barnes
professor of writing at the University of Idaho, and author of two memoirs and two previous novels, including "A Country Called Home."
Related Items
Read An Excerpt
Excerpt from "In the Kingdom of Men" by Kim Barnes. Copyright 2012 by Kim Barnes. Reprinted here by permission of Knopf. All rights reserved.
Comments
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I was wondering if our guest now looks back at the time in her life she left home because not being able to attend a graduation was a mistake. Was life at home that bad? Could she not wait another year to escape and attend college?
I have 19 year old daughter in college. She has asked to move in with her friend in an apartment. Her friend is pregnant. I told her that it is a bad idea. To stay with family and save us that extra rent money and go to her classes. I also let her know that her friend would be a distraction to her education, especially when the baby is born. She has refused to listen
Does your guest in hind sight regretted her disobedience to her family. Would she condone her children showing similar behavior to her.
Thanks
It's so interesting to hear about the Aramco experiences, because much of it parallels my experiences as a military brat growing up overseas. I spent nine years stationed in Italy growing up, three years in Sigonella and six in Naples. I found that there were always two kinds of people: those who loved it (the ones who left the base, lived on the economy, went out and learned the language and shopped the markets), and those who hated it (the ones who stayed on base, never went beyond the fenced boundaries, and whose only travels consisted of visiting other bases).
It's curious why some people embrace exploring and experiencing a different culture and others run away from it.
Gee, another guest who is a liberal cry-baby. Oooooh..."I was in a relationship for 2 years with an abusive man"....like, it was his fault you made a poor choice?
Why didn't you leave? I have no sympathy.
I recently had an English requirement to fulfill, and the class was taught by a bleeding lib like this Barnes.
Long story short kids, do not take a required writing class without thoroughly examining what the teacher is like, and the subject matter, as well.
You definitely do not want to put yourself under the thumb of one of these liberal tyrants. By the time the class was over, my animus for the "teacher" knew no bounds.
You will be much better off either skipping the class and making it up later in some format you can live with, or finding some other way to fulfill the requirement.
I grew up in SA in the 1970's. The author has some things right but her second hand recollections do little justice to actually living there and experiencing it firsthand. Most folks who made siddiqui considered it an art form. When you think about- this was mostly a population of Engineers. I doubt most Aramcons would call it "white lightening" and they would undoubtedly tell you that they enjoyed it- if they drank it.
As far as supplementing college tuition- to my knowledge that was not in place but boarding school was because the Saudis did not want a bunch of teenagers getting into trouble in their country. So off we all went to the US, Europe and Lebanon- before civil war.
There's something to be said for living your story.
Yes, it was an oasis of sorts for those of us who lived there. It's not the same today. It was a place for families and for those who could deal with situations that often made little sense. The experience afforded us opportunities that otherwise may not have been available at home. We traveled the world, went to the best schools and lived in a world with little resemblance to where we came from.
For what it's worth- Aramco offered a program prior to departure that attempted to prepare people for what was to come. I can assure you nothing prepares you for your mother being literally carted off by an old Arab man in Udaliah the first week you arrive or for the morning after you arrive and open your door in one of the temporary camps to see nothing but sand as long as the horizon.
With all due respect, I haven't read this authors book- but in my writing classes at Syracuse University- we were encouraged to write what we know. I am skeptical about second hand memories.
To Smoot--
You seem to be making a huge bed of conclusions from one passing statement. Ms. Barnes made no requests for sympathy, nor did she offer any excuses-- merely that she fell into a relationship that had she grown up with perhaps a wider perspective on the world and its different kinds of people, she might have been better prepared for. This sounds like a remarkably well adjusted perspective for any person to have, liberal or conservative.
It's incredible that out of the entire hour-long show, you managed to seize upon this single statement as justification to apply a label of 'liberal cry-baby.' Did you miss the first half? Or not stick around for the latter half? Somehow, if Ms. Barnes was indeed the sort of 'liberal tyrant' you're comparing her to, I can't imagine she'd miss the opportunity to decry oil production and oil companies as great evils. And yet somehow, she never once did.
Interesting, that.
I would call troll on this, but surely trolls have better avenues than NPR to get their jollies.
I grew up in Saudi Arabia - from 1960 - 1986 and my father was there for 34 years. I haven't read the book (not sure yet whether I will), but I was tuned into the program. I don't ever remember my mom going to Khobar to buy 'cocktail dresses' and then going back to the compound and boozing it up--of course there was a lot of drinking..and my mom wasn't a big drinker. I've never heard of 'white-lightening' either. It's brown or white. And to the young man that called in and said the taste never got any better, then maybe your father or the brown or white you were drinking wasn't made properly or they didn't have the patience to run the still enough. You always knew who made the better run when you went to parties. As nprfan wrote below, we were NOT subsidized for college/university. We were subsidized only for boarding school. They did pay for travelling back and forth throughout college, however.
And to the woman who called in and commented about her friends who came back to the US and had their kids--shame that they couldn't respect or trust in the medical that Aramco provided-- and I am soo happy I was almost born in the middle of the desert on the way from Ras Tanura to Dhahran!
I was there during the 6-day war and we did not leave as so many families did and never returned to a life that was very rich and rewarding.
Well-said. Thank you!
Carpetfibers -
I heard almost all the show. Let's be real here, the formula for this show is: Diane needs guests that either appeal to, or rile up, her liberal audience.
To do that, they offer a platform to enhance the guest's economic prospects in exchange for whatever content the guest brings. This arrangement obviously applies to guests that come on to discuss political topics as well.
I just don't pretend it is anything else. In this case, I just happened to cut through the usual liberal professor B.S. to comment on her bad decision to stay with an abusive person for 2 years.
These liberal academic types like to come across like they are so intelligent.
I am just pointing out that despite being a trained liar (like journalists), she demonstrates she isn't all that smart by allowing that situation to go on that long.
I worked for Fluor and lived in Dhaharan North in the contractor camp with my wife and 2 kids.
Regarding alcohol:
Almost everyone drank sidiqui which was produced by the "engineers" at Aramco.
Every time we went to the "supermarkets" in Al Khobar 4 out of 5 people in line in front of us would be buying bottle caps, 5 pounds of sugar, and two empty cases of soda bottles to brew there own beer. We made 7 or 8 batches from an Aramco recipe which included brewed tea. We named it "Schmidt's of Dammam after a guy that worked with us that lived in Dammam (20 minutes from Dhaharan).
My wife made her own wine from bottled grape juice yeast (from Aramco) and sugar.
Other observations
I thought that during that time frame (76-77) SA was the safest place in the world for Americans except for the roads which were deadly.
There were remnants of past car accidents all over the place. Nobody stripped the cars on the side of the road so wrecks stayed in place for months. Some of the locations of crashed cars were so strange that our only guess was that "they must have fallen out of a plane".
Just my 2 cents!