ABSTRACT
Greg Mortenson’s 2006 Three Cups of Tea provides a unique opportunity for teaching religion and literature. Though Mortenson intended his book to be read as a non-fiction tale of the ways he overcame personal and administrative obstacles to fulfill his dream of building schools for Muslim girls in rural Pakistan, large portions of the book have since come to light as having been altered or completely fabricated. His most egregious embellishments, however, are those that construct his selfless and heroic character in relationship to the needy and uneducated Muslims with whom he works in Pakistan. The four-week section in which students read, present on, and analyze this book takes them on a dynamic ride that they will not soon forget; after sympathizing with and supporting Mortenson’s mission to bring education and civilization to a forgotten corner of America’s post-9/11 “war on terror,” students abruptly realize that their perceptions of Islam, of literature, and of themselves have similarly been constructed by an American media whose over-simplified world readily projected Greg Mortenson as a “white savior” who might no longer be worthy of either our admiration or our donations.
