Kiveat and Heidler pair portraits of Afghani women with a short interview about their live in Afghanistan before, during and after the overthrow of the Taliban in their book “Women of Courage: Intimate Stories from Afghanistan.” An interview is conducted with a housewife who burned herself, flight attended, photojournalist, actress, saleswomen, filmmaker, abused wife, presidential candidate and many more Afghani women. The book contains forty interviews with women from different walks of life. The author mentions in the introduction that three of the women have fallen victim since their portrait appeared. Extremists shot two of the women, and another one of them died giving birth to her first child. Kiviat argues that these women were “victim…
Author Jenny Nordberg interviewed several Afghan families and asked about their lifestyle. In different Afghan cities, males are the dominant gender; as they are in most countries. But in Afghan cultures men are free to work and have all the freedom that they desire, the women do not. Woman will dress up their daughters as boys, called ‘bacha posh” (meaning dressed like a boy), so they could have a male to represent the family or work if the family needed money. In the story of Mehran, Shubnum, and Niima, this means changing their appearance, lifestyle, and their self-identities.…
Taslima Nasrin once said: “Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.” This quote also applies to a book called a thousand splendid suns by Khaled hosseini and Deepa Metha’s Film Water. A thousand splendid suns in a book about two women in Afghanistan with an abusive husband. They struggle for survival and for their human rights that have been overlooked by the Taliban and a patriarchal society. Water is a movie about widows living in India. They are sent to the country side to live with other widows supposedly so they can live pure lives. In actuality they are cast aside and denied the basic respect all humans deserve. Ironically, the only way they can make enough money to survive is by committing acts as impure as it gets. They are forced to turn to prostitution. These two stories show that a cultural society’s refusal to change religious practices causes the oppression of women. The characters Mariam, kalyani, and chuyia demonstrate this.…
Between the book, My Forbidden Face, written by Latifa, a young women who grew up under the Taliban’s control and the article Women in Afghanistan: Afghan Women’s Rights, written by PBS, have many similarities in how women were treated. They tell how before the Taliban arrived, they were a normal country, with equal rights for men and women, and how the women dominated most work forces, such as teaching, medical, and others. They even played a part in the government. However, when the Taliban arrived everything the women had known about life in Afghanistan was changed for the worse. The both discuss, in detail, the overwhelming circumstances women had to overcome to life their lives, and how they were crippled, both physically and mentally by the Taliban. These next few paragraphs will go in detail about some of these drastic changes made by the Taliban.…
Although the story of two women under oppression in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule may seem distant and irrelevant, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (418 pages) is a heart-wrenching historical novel that delves into the intertwined lives of Mariam and Laila, two women married to the same abusive husband, and the struggles they face. The novel takes place in Afghanistan, beginning in the 1960s with Mariam’s childhood and ending in the early 2000s with Laila and Tariq’s reunion. Poverty, separation of social classes, and the expectation that a child born out of wedlock will be shunned are factors that create conflict between Mariam, Nana, and Jalil. Furthermore, Rasheed, the abusive husband of Mariam and Laila, does not believe…
Gender defines an individual’s destiny in Afghanistan. Men are respected, blessed with many luxuries, and are overall treated as kings, as for women, they are objects destined to serve and please. Inhumane injustices are the norm for a woman in Afghanistan, as discussed in Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, Hosseini highlights the visible connection between politics, from the depart of Soviet Union forces to the arrival of the Taliban, and the distinguishable oppression of the nation of Afghanistan, notably the significant impact it had on women. Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan devoted themselves to achieve equality and obtained access to education and employment, all those opportunities vanished as soon as the Taliban conquered Afghanistan.…
As the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini came to an end, the emotional turmoil never lessened. As both Mariam and Laila’s stories progressed, so did the tragic war in Afghanistan. The consistent combat changed both their lives in dramatic ways. I chose this novel due to my cousin being deployed to Afghanistan, and I am interested in the culture and daily life of those who live in Afghanistan.…
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 husband, Rasheed. The women are forced to clean, cook, wear veils outside of the house, and have to take care of the children on a daily basis. Throughout the book, Mariam and Laila, as well as other characters, learn to endure all these hardships in their lives. To endure is the ability to bear with or tolerate something without fighting back, but the more someone has to endure, the more they change as a character. Thus forcing one to choose to act out in physical and verbal violence, and making poor decisions in their life. People who are able to endure will go farther in life than those who cannot because they do not fight back.…
Have you ever felt so alone it was completely unfathomable? Have you been caught in the darkest time of despair, and received no help from anyone else? Have you ever struggled through a life altering hardship, and only have yourself to fall back on? The women of Afghanistan as pictured in A Thousand Splendid Suns have. This novel written by Khaled Hosseini carries a theme of contrasting companionship throughout. Hosseini focuses on the beautiful and evil sides of companionship, and contrasts the admirable with the atrocious. These women presented in the novel illustrate the need of companionship among themselves. Afghan women are imprisoned by their male counterparts, and treated as lone diseases. Abandoned, resented, worthless. Without support of others, these women have no chance to thrive. Some of these women may not be able to react to these challenges without the support of others.…
The majority of Americans are uninformed about the injustice of the Afghanistan women in the many recent years. The women in Afghanistan didn’t always have a burka hiding their face from others in public. There was a time when the women had a life very much like today’s ordinary American woman. In the book, The Dressmaker, we get to know of how oppression changes the lives of each and every person in a family along with the changes in their community. For the community of Kabul changes lead to a financial and economical struggle. The women’s lives are transformed after the Taliban take control of Kabul. The rights of women are stripped from them and they are left with basically nothing. This change in the lives of the women brings more responsibility…
“Justice and power must be brought together so that whatever is just, may be powerful and whatever is powerful may be just”…
Lukanovich, N. "Women in Afghanistan - Before and After the Taliban." Forget the Spin. N.p., 7 Nov. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2013. .…
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini is seen through the eyes of two young female protagonists, who have a strong and well-developed character. In the novel, the author shows their hardship, their lives in a hopeless society, Afghanistan, and how throughout their life they face cruelty and vulnerability.…
In Thomas C. Fosters One Story, he offers a valid argument to his view on poetry There is no such thing as a wholly original work of literature. Some people who first read this quote may think that he is discrediting all poets and accusing them of unoriginality, but that is not what he is trying to say at all. I believe that what he is trying to say is that even though unoriginality is usually impossible, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Because of unoriginality, it forces writers to open their minds to a broader spectrum. It pushes them to find unique and different ways to make their poetry somewhat new.Some characters in literature, due to unoriginality, can be parallel to each other with their similar characteristics and situations.…
Women were horribly oppressed under the control of the Taliban. Women were prohibited from working outside their homes, attending school, or appearing in public without a close male relative. They were forced to ride on “women only” busses, couldn’t wear brightly colored clothes, and the windows of their house had to be painted so that people outside could not see them. If they committed a crime the punishment was a public stoning and they were not entitled to petition a court directly. In this oppressive environment, RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) opened schools and hospitals for Afghan women and girls. Then in January of 2002, president Karzai signed the Declaration of Essential Rights of Afghan Women as mentioned before. This gave women equal rights to both education and political participation and the freedoms of movement, speech and dress (they no longer had to wear the burqa). Women were guaranteed a percentage of seats in both the upper and lower legislative houses. Even the first women-managed radio station in Kabul came on air. Sima Wali provided her insight and her opinion on why she feels women’s oppression has been liberated.…