Being female in a Taliban-like society

JulianTheApostate

I finished the book this evening. My main reaction was the realization how much it sucks being a women in a society, like Afghanistan under the Taliban, that treats women so horribly.

Now, that wasn't a surprise, since I've ready plenty about Afghanistan before. However, the novel was more emotionally intense than the news stories and real-life accounts that I've seen elsewhere. Perhaps I let myself empathize with fictional characters, while I block such feelings when reading about real-world suffering in the news.

It's not a profound insight to observe that women in misogynistic Islamic societies have shitty lives. Still, that's the overpowering sentiment I'm feeling right now.

Ophelia · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 7:27 am Post subject:

I, too, had read other books on a similar theme, and I expected violence to erupt at some point in Rasheed's family, which it did.
I, too, was greatly shocked all the same.

As I was reading the final chapters I remembered what I had read in Nelson Mandela's autobiography " Long Way to Freedom" , about the oppressors and the oppressed. This naturally applies to men oppressing women:

"It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity".

WildCityWoman

I've always enjoyed books from other cultures. It's pleasing to see that these books are getting this attention.

I've read four of 'em in the past year's time:

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Kit Runner

Purple Hibiscus

Half a Yellow Sun

And we thought Caravan was a shocking novel? Hoo boy!

Thanks so much to both these authors for their work!

WildCityWoman · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 2:01 pm Post subject: BTW . . .

Any other recommendations?

I have a title on order from the library - can't think of it - something with the word or name 'Shirah' in it. It's supposed to be a really good one.

Ophelia · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:01 pm Post subject:

Carly, i am also a fan of foreign cultures and books about them. I could write pages of recommendations, and here are a few:

1- Iran
Daughter of Persia, by Sattareh Farman Farmaian.

It's a true story, and one of the things that makes it interesting is that it starts with the writer's family before the time of the Shah.
It's a mind-opener and is very well written.

2- China

The Wild Swans is one of many stories about the Cultural Revolution, and one I particularly remember over many years.

For a unique viewpoint on the same period:

Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now by Jan Wong

The true story of a Canadian student (whose parents had emigrated from China) who worshipped maoism and went to China to pratise communism, blindly following a doctrine that everybody else around her had already given up on -- except party cadres. The amount of time it took her to come to her senses is amazing, but the telling of it is well worth reading.

WildCityWoman · Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:53 pm Post subject: Thanks, Ophelia . .

Red China Blues, I did a long time ago - in fact, I actually met Jan Wong at Ralph Thornton Centre here in Toronto.

I'll order those other two from the library.


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