Post # 4 : Iman's Adversity

Iman's mother, a gynecologist, gave her daughter a man's name when she arrived into the world with the hope that this would better prepare her for the challenges she would face as a female in Muslim East Africa. Her parents were decidedly progressive: Iman's father was a diplomat stationed in Tanzania, and under the law he could have had multiple wives, but chose to keep just one. The parents agreed that their daughter should be sent to a private Catholic school for girls, which was considered more progressive than the standard Islamic education available to young females in the 1960s. There, Iman thrived. "I was a very nerdy child," she told husband David Bowie when he interviewed her for Interview in 1994. "I never fit in, so I became laboriously studious."