Dr. Leila Ahmed's memoir, "A Border Passage: From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey", pulses with a theme of many women's stories: the struggle to define oneself in the face of social restraints. The 1999 book by Ahmed, the first professor of women's studies in religion at Harvard's Divinity School, came long before the recent wave of memoirs and other writings by Muslim women that have intrigued American readers. Dr. Kecia Ali, professor of Islamic studies at Boston University, who teaches some of the writings in her courses says there is just a tremendous appetite for the books--a media-created appetite, and the voices are perceived as authoritative. As memoirs such as Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books", Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Infidel", and even Deborah Rodriguez's fiction best seller "Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil", enjoy popularity, Ali and Dr. Aminah McCloud, who also teaches Islamic studies, say it is important to consider how they affect the representation of Muslim women. Moreover, Ali says memoirs are significant and should be taught in Islamic studies. They are individual stories, and that is exactly as it should be. Scholars who specialize in both Islam and gender--like any academic who has trained in a certain area--are better equipped to teach the popular literature in a larger historic context. They can provide a "more sophisticated representation" of Muslim women.