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Loading... The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan (original 2014; edition 2015)by Jenny Nordberg (Author)
Work InformationThe Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg (2014)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Afghanistan from the point of view of its woman and not what the media portrays. Afghani women cannot be saved by Western feminism. They have to come up with their own feminism that respects the good parts of their culture and religion while rejecting the bad and evil and oppressive parts that hurt women and men. ( ) I gave this four stars because the author took me into the lives of these women in a way I did not expect. When I finished it and closed the book, I experienced an immediate, undeniably fierce and physical awareness of my own freedom, the freedom of my body and the freedom of my life, as a woman and as a human being. I was also surprised to find myself forced into an inner dialogue about the meaning of gender and its politics, as I read this book. A full understanding of the complexity of these women's lives will not come from one book. But Jenny Nordberg is passionate and convincing in her attempt, and I feel privileged to have been allowed to be there with her. I appreciate her feminist perspective and her understanding of the origins and real-life implications of patriarchal systems. This is a requirement if an honest look is to be taken. Although I thought I "knew" how the women in Afghanistan live, reading this book was shocking to me, in the way it pulled me into their lives, as if into the very clothes they wear. Imagining myself veiled from head to toe, looking through a small mesh "window" over my eyes (making my chaperoned excursions outside almost dangerous from my literal lack of perspective and peripheral vision), imagining that my skin is a purely sexual covering, imagining myself peeking through the curtains of my prison/home to catch a glimpse of life outdoors, and imagining a lifetime of dim lighting in perpetually darkened rooms, this book gave me chills. This book will be unforgettable to me. Thank you, Ms. Nordberg. An interesting insight into the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan, particularly those who become bacha posh. I was also struck by the similarities drawn to how women/girls in other cultures have also passed, or do pass, as male. However there is a lot of repetition and despite the fascinating subject-matter, I was not as enthused by my reading of this as I had expected. 3-and-a-bit stars.
“The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan,” delves into the practice of “bacha posh,” in which prepubescent Afghan girls are dressed and passed off as boys in families, schools and communities. Through extensive interviews with former bacha posh, observation of present ones and conversations with doctors and teachers, Nordberg unearths details of a dynamic that one suspects will be news to the armies of aid workers and gender experts in post-invasion Afghanistan. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners. No library descriptions found.
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumJenny Nordberg's book Underground Girls of Kabul was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.309581Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people People by gender or sex Biography and History by Region AsiaLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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