Anonymous Landay

In Natasha Trethewey’s poetry collection Native Guard, the reader is exposed to the story of Trethewey’s growing up in the southern United States and the tragedy which she encountered during her younger years, in addition to her experiences with prejudice and to issues surrounding prejudice within the society she is living in. Throughout this work, Trethewey often refers to graves and provides compelling imagery regarding the burial of the dead. Within Trethewey’s work, the recurring imagery surrounding graves evolves from the graves simply serving as a personal reminder of the past, to a statement on the collective memory of society and comments on how Trethewey is troubled with what society has forgotten as it signifies a willingness to overlook the dehumanization of a large group of people.

Violence, war, discrimination, and poverty: these issues have long been a part of Afghanistan’s history. Even though things in Afghanistan are getting better, war fills the country, and women and children have to learn to endure abuse, caused by men and the Taliban; they also learn to endure poverty. Considering this, it is no wonder why Afghanistan is in the terrible position it is in now. Many Afghan cities like Kabul are filled with things like violence and discrimination, and the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini takes place in Kabul. This book follows the lives of two Afghani women, Mariam and Laila, as they suffer pain and discrimination received from the Taliban and their

Today in the post –Taliban era, women still struggle with their rights. Resolutions were produced and rights for women have advanced since September 11th but in order to move forward, much work needs to be done. Hundreds of years of repression for Afghan women will take a lot longer than a few years to actually revolutionize. There is violence towards women that are not practicing traditions customs and fear retaliations from the Taliban. Customs are difficult to change as well as government policies. (Bora Laskin Law). In Afghanistan, religious and cultural values, politics, and an uncertain acting government have played a major part in the struggle for women’s rights.

Khaled Hosseini in his novel And the Mountains Echoed shows that male authors can fight for the rights of women through their work, and create a feminist fiction. And the Mountains Echoed is a successful feminist fiction because it displays some unique female characters such as Nila Wahdati, which voices out feminism and how women are oppressed in the Afghan society. Nila Wahdati is gifted, stylish, condemned French-Afghan housewife who writes impassioned poetry about love, sex, desire, and loss in 1950s Kabul. I chose Nila because I think she is misinterpreted by many readers including myself. The first time I read the chapter focusing on Nila’s history I was not impressed by her, and although she does still does not make a good impression, she is a great example of the affluent women from Kabul during the 1950s. Furthermore, she is integral to the story, the infertile woman who buys Pari from Saboor thereby serving as the catalyst for the novel’s events.

Growing up and living in Afghanistan as a woman has its challenges. Parents choose who can marry you and they choose everything for you. In this book, Laila and Mariam both show the struggles it is to be a girl, and how much disrespect they get in Afghanistan. Both Mariam and Laila are married to the same man, and he is abusive to both of them. They also live under Taliban rule, and the rules that they set are very unfair for women. In Khaled Hosseni’s novel, he has many different themes but the most prevalent one is of woman inequality, and that is shown through multiple accounts of abuse, disrespect, and unfairness.

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston’s reason for writing this memoir is personal. On one hand, she used the writing of this book as a personal journey of reflection on how her and her family’s experiences at Manzanar has had a profound effect on the rest of her life. On the other hand, the author wanted future generations, as well as others, who were not fully aware of what

“I do not wish for women to have power over men, but over themselves” Mary Wollstonecraft. In the vast majority of places around the world, men have the upper hand over women, whether it is in the household, workplace, or government. Even in America, the land of the free, women are still discriminated against to a slight extent. A man and woman could have the exact same job, but the man would bring home a greater salary than the woman. In spite of the fact that this is unfair, at least women in America are permitted to work. Khaled Hosseini brings awareness to the women of Afghanistan who are victims of the inhumane and unjust laws of the Taliban. In his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini uses agonizing scenes and imagery to analyze the ways Afghan women continue to subsist in an oppressive and discriminatory society from the 1950s to today.

Throughout Khaled Hosseini’s novel, The Kite Runner, the reader observes many injustices committed due to the presence of the Taliban and cultural conflict in Afghanistan. One of the most concerning issues in Afghanistan is the mistreatment and inequality that women face on a daily basis due to Taliban mandates. Women in Afghanistan are treated as inferior beings to men and are unable to stand up for themselves due the laws the Taliban enforces. Hosseini uses the wives of Amir and Hassan, Soraya and Farzana, to represent the injustices to which women in Afghanistan are subjected.

Hosseini makes it very apparent that honour is extremely important to people in the Afghan culture and what others think of them means a lot. An Afghan would do anything to keep their honour, even if it means they are unhappy. In both novels, Hosseini shows a number of examples of dishonour and the negative impacts it can have to an individual’s well-being. According to the Honour Based Violence Network, In Afghanistan, ‘honour’ crimes remain very high along with many other forms of violence against women, and are increasing as attitudes fail to keep pace with economic and social changes.

The moving and inspirational book, The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, depicts the interesting and emotional journey of Amir and his father as they escape the volatile geopolitical state in Afghanistan during the 1980s and move to the United States to remove any entanglement with the indecency of the people in Afghanistan, who were willing to give up lives in exchange for money. To complete this transition in their lives, they move to Fremont, California. This experience was truly eye-opening to not only Amir but also Baba, as he now has to adjust to the American culture that in some cases is the polar opposite of the Afghani culture that he is accustomed to. One of the overarching moral conflicts was the role of women in society in

The role women play in this novel demonstrates a significant part in how Afghanistan is portrayed. The first most important part of a woman’s life shown in The Kite Runner is her reputation. The level of respect they get is dependant on their reputation of being a proper woman. Maintaining a good social status for Afghan women is a lifelong restriction because when they do something against the role of a good woman, their reputation is tarnished. One example of this shown through the reputation of Soraya Taheri in the novel. Soraya runs

Heroes, kings and presidents, for so long men are the protagonist of the stories. Across the world and through the centuries, women have always been situated below men. Women were considered the weak sex, they are portrayed as delicate, obedient, naive and passionate. “Never trust in women; nor rely upon their vows” (44). As the wives of the kings on The Arabian Nights, whose passion brought them to cheat on both their husbands. They ended up being executed because they threatened the kings’ power. Or bringing danger into the families, as the wives of Kasim and Ali Baba, who wouldn’t think of the consequences of their actions and would act by the pure instinct of greed and naiveness. Yet, seldomly acknowledged, women have had to step up to fix troubled situations, the few stories told of women of scarce resources who have manage to triumph over the standardized society. This not only shows how women take advantage of the resources at their reach but how their

Throughout the poem Kabul by Saib-e-Tabriz, we see many personifications of Kabul as a beautiful woman. The poem emphasizes on the many attractive traits of Kabul by using words such as “dazzling”, “sparkling”, “enthralling” and “gaiety” which contrasts the hardships and pain of the women in Afghanistan. This oxymoronic comparison makes us wonder deeper into the meaning of beauty and what is ultimately the meaning of being a beautiful woman on the inside.

Honour killing is a poem written by Imtiaz Dharker which depicts the struggles of women within countries in the middle-east that oppress women whether it be verbally or physically, and Dharker being a Pakistani woman expressed her views through this piece of work. An honour killing is the act of taking someone’s life who has disrespected themselves and their family, an example of this is a Pakistani woman who was shot by her family because she wanted to divorce the man she was with. The true difference between a western culture and a middle eastern culture can be shown in the fact that the Pakistani senate refused to condemn what happened to this woman and deemed it an honour killing. The poem is an outcry for freedom for woman who are being oppressed and kept down by cultural ideas within the countries which commit these acts.

“Presents from my aunts in Pakistan” by Moniza Alvi is a poem concentrated on a persona (Alvi at age 13) who is perplexed by the nature of her nationality (half-Pakistani and half-English) when she receives a gift from her aunts back home in Pakistan. Firstly, the speaker sets a negative tone for the first five stanzas as she feels the salwar kameez isn’t appropriate for a girl her age living in England. However, as the poem progresses the speaker metaphorically embarks on an endeavour to recognise her cultural identity by recalling her past in Pakistan. This essay will