Suitcase Filled With Nails

A spirited artist with a can-do attitude Yvonne Wakefield naively leaves behind a secure life in the lush Pacific Northwest to teach art in the desert state of Kuwait. Over the course of six years, she will instruct university aged Muslim women, earn her students’ trust, and learn the consequences of freedom of expression, taken for granted in one culture but not granted in another. Despite obstacles set by her detractors, she persists, and her students. and life in Kuwait flourish. Yet the traps never disappear, only multiply as others set more for her, intent on denying what they have no desire to understand. Told from the unique perspective of an artist, Suitcase Filled with Nails is a colorful, true, timely, rare and riveting tale about living and coping in the Middle East.

A spirited artist with a can-do attitude Yvonne Wakefield naively leaves behind a secure life in the lush Pacific Northwest to teach art in the desert state of Kuwait. Over the course of six years, she will instruct university aged Muslim women, earn her students’ trust, and learn the consequences of freedom of expression, taken for granted in one culture but not granted in another. Despite obstacles set by her detractors, she persists, and her students. and life in Kuwait flourish. Yet the traps never disappear, only multiply as others set more for her, intent on denying what they have no desire to understand. Told from the unique perspective of an artist, Suitcase Filled with Nails is a colorful, true, timely, rare and riveting tale about living and coping in the Middle East.

Yvonne Wakefield is a fine artist and author with a doctorate in Human Organizational Systems. She writes like she paints. “Cabin Journal,” and “Three Summers,” her first two coming of age books about building a log cabin and living in the wilderness, are out of print. Examples of her art can be found on her website. She divides her time, accompanied by a husband and small animal menagerie, between homes and studios in Washington and Oregon.