Shaihu Umar, By Alhaji Balewe

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is a beautiful tale of two women in Afghanistan during the Taliban uprising. They grow up on complete opposite sides of Afghan culture. The main character, Mariam, grows up in a more traditional way caused by her forced marriage to Rasheed. Laila on the other hand, grows up with a supportive father who encourages gender equality and education. There are many cultural differences such as, women’s rights, public executions, and the Taliban. The two main characters, Mariam and Laila, develop greatly throughout the novel. They push each other to be better and to stand up for equality. This plays into the themes of the novel. Women’s strength and loyalty are the two most important themes. They

People are different in many ways. Ranging from colour of their skin to their ethnic backgrounds. How society copes with these differences is what defines prejudice and discrimination. Racism, social class and ethnicity have become a never ending cycle that begins to shape the opinions of how people treat one another. The novel The Kite Runner written by Khaled Hosseini revolves around a society constructed around two socially diverse ethnic groups the Pashtuns who practice Sunni Islam and the Hazaras who follow Shia Islam. Throughout the novel The Kite Runner, a variety of characters have made decisions that affect the overall outcome of the novel which base around ethnicity, race and social class.

The novel The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini, is the story of a young, upper class boy by the name of Amir and his friend, a lower class boy named Hassan. While Amir is a Pashtun and a Sunni Muslim, Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a muslim, which causes the main conflict between the two. Amir and Hassan learn more and more about their social status, as well as their personal friendships and problems as they grow up in Afghanistan.

Alexander Falconbridge . White men would also come in the night and take people from their homes. African tribes would go to war with each other and whoever won got the other ones people. According to Dr.Alexander Falconbridge "During my stay on the coast of Africa, I was an eye-witness of the following transaction: a black trader invited a Negro, who resided a little way up the country, to come and see him. After the entertainment was over, the trader proposed to his guest, to treat him with a sight of one of the ships lying in the river. The unsuspicious countryman readily consented, and accompanied the trader in a canoe to the side of the ship, which he viewed with pleasure and astonishment. While he was thus employed, some black traders on board, who appeared to be in the secret, leaped into the canoe, seized the unfortunate man, and dragging him into the ship, immediately sold him." "Slave Trade: the African Connection, ca 1788" EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2007)" . Some slave traders were trading to keep their families. When people sold the slaves, they tended to split the families. The slaves would have no idea where their loved ones went whether it was in the same country as them or to a completely different

A Thousand Splendid Suns, a book written by Khaled Hosseini, gives us a unique and informative glimpse into life in Afghanistan in the early 1960’s to the 2000’s. In it we can see many different political and social issues ravaging the country, with the most evident being gender inequality. Though many diverse groups of people were being discriminated against at the time, most of the subordination fell onto women as they had more and more rights taken away from them when various ruling powers took control. The author relays this information to us and educates us as to what happened through compelling and thought-provoking literary devices such as symbolic characters and objects, and allusions. By using these

Khaled Hosseini’s sophomore novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, shares a setting with his previous novel, the turmoil of the recent decades of Afghanistan 's existence. However, despite similar themes, Hosseini once again manages to craft a story that is as engaging as it is poignant, as compassionate as it is critical, and as thoughtful as it is visceral.

Throughout world history women have been treated abysmally. Societies with male-dominance have abused and used women and continue to do so today. Women have been made vulnerable to a man due to the spread of cultural values and beliefs in society that condemn them from power. In Khaled Hosseini's novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, the two main characters Mariam and Laila develop an unconditional bond in which they become each others protectors. The immense inner strength of women from adversity has been exemplified through the growth of Mariam and Laila's contrasting relationship, the pain they endure from Rasheed which strengthens their bond and the courage within them that ultimately resolves their conflict.

In African culture, slavery was more of a servitude rather than the race-based torture for free labor that the American’s turned it into. Once the slaves were taken off the boat, they were most often sent to one of the southern states where they would be placed up for auction. The type of auctions held, resembled more like auctions that are held for farmer’s looking to purchase cattle. According to Clayton (2007), “Specifics of the auction process were covered extensively in magazine and newspaper accounts of the day” (Clayton, 2007, pg.3). Auctions were mostly held during the morning hours and lasted roughly three hours. There was a questioning period that basically allowed the potential buyer to gather information about the “stock” they were looking to buy. Slaves were made to work the fields with no pay and barely sufficient living

In the novel “The Moor’s Account” by Laila Lalami, the author stresses how the main character Mustafa is effected by his family and how that relates to the future he has in the New World. This is most identified by how he feels about his father, the giving up of his name, and his struggle to fight for a new life. Unlike other slaves in the New World, Mustafa ibn Muhammad ibn Abdussalam al-Zamori chose his fate for the possibility of a better life. He had the opportunity to try to work for himself and his family while still in Morocco. In fact, his father had even wanted him to do that. But Mustafa knew that he was confident in his decision to sell himself into slavery so that his family can be better off from there. In the story, the reader sees how Mustafa struggles as he journeys from Morocco and across the New World in search of the possibility for a new life. Overall, the reader sees how Mustafa struggles with not following his father’s guidance, his loss of humanity from his name being taken away, the quest to avoid changing his entire humanity in his new life, and how everything changing has affected him and changed him as a person.

After the atrocity that left thousands dead, the survivors were faced with the fight for the right of their land. With colonization came slavery, because without it European colonization would have stayed limited in North America. Slaves were defined by the Europeans as non-Christian and non-European people. In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly stated, "All servants imported and brought into the Country ... who were not Christians in their native Country ... shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion ... shall be held to be real estate. If any slave resists his master ... correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction ... the master shall be free of all punishment ... as if such accident never happened." Most of the Europeans were completely dependent on Indian labor in their colonies. Slavery was an ever present establishment in the early world and Africans, Europeans, and even Native Americans kept slaves before Christopher Columbus ever arrived to America. To raise money for his expeditions to America, Columbus would ship Native Americans to Spain to be put in the slave market and auctioned off for the right price. Europeans were in need of workers to build their houses for them and clear the fields, so Indian Slaves were used by virtually every European nation for construction, plantations, and

Khaled Hosseini presents the struggle Afghan women go through every day by discussing honour, marriage and the place of women in society in Afghanistan.

Plot summary: Amir flashbacks to when he was twelve years old in Afghanistan. He lives with his father, Baba, and has two servants, Ali and Hassan, who are also a father and son duo. The latter two are Hazaras, Afghan’s minority, and as such, are subjected to racial slurs and cruelty. Amir and Hassan are playing when Assef, Kamal, and

“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”-Chinese Proverb In the quote above human beings are compared to a gem. The way gem is made perfect through various process so is human perfected through the obstacles, learning the process, difficulties, trials. The perfect example for this quote would be A Time to Dance book by Padma Venkatraman the author of Climbing the stairs, and Island’s end.

Slavery is defined as “a legal or economic system under which people are treated as property.” While the legality of the system has varied at different times in different areas of the world, today slavery is illegal in all nations. However, it is estimated that there are still between 20 and 36 million people living as slaves today. Modern slavery takes many forms, including debt bondage, forced marriages, slavery by descent, and sexual slavery. Slaves are forced to work long hours without pay, often in demanding and even dangerous conditions. In addition, slaves are often physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by their owners, but as property they have no way of reporting this violence. Slaves also receive little to no education, so even if they manage to escape their situation, they often have a very hard time finding work, meaning many former slaves live in dire poverty. While in earlier centuries, slaves had been very expensive, today a slave can be bought for around $90, making it easier to replace a slave that is unable to

Khaled Hosseini once said: “there are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.” Rape in Afghanistan is said to be an “epidemic,” but according to the Oxford Dictionary, the definition of the term is “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.” Rape in this country is viewed as something that is inevitable and cannot be stopped. Usually, rape also involves domestic violence, hence the reason they’re paired together. Contrary to common misconception, men are raped as well as women, especially children of both genders. In the Kite Runner, rape is a topic that is prevalent in and throughout the book. Bacha Bazi is even a part of the Kite Runner.