The pitiable plight of the women and children of Afghanistan under the Taliban rule has gained international attention and the press and many writers have taken up the issue seriously. Women writers from the West have visited Afghan refugee camps and witnessed the hardships suffered by the women and children.
Deborah Ellis is one of the many writers who have treated the issue of the Afghan women under the Taliban. She is a Canadian writer who also works as a mental health residential counsellor in Toronto. In 1999, she spent several months talking with women and girls in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Russia. During her stay there, she met the mother and sister of a girl in Kabul who cut off her hair, put on boy's clothes and sold things off in a tray in the market place to support her family. This reminded Ellis of children's enormous capacity for acts of courage and creative survival, when the adult world conspires to stifle their future. These incidents inspired Deborah Ellis to write the first of the Breadwinner Trilogy in Fall 2000. The Breadwinner was catapulted into the spotlight after the events of 9/11. Teachers and parents used The Breadwinner in order to help children understand what life was like for their peers in the Middle East. Ellis also wrote the sequel Parvana's Journey and followed it with Mud City (Shauzia) which is the final book in the Trilogy.
Deborah Ellis is one of the many writers who have treated the issue of the Afghan women under the Taliban. She is a Canadian writer who also works as a mental health residential counsellor in Toronto. In 1999, she spent several months talking with women and girls in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Russia. During her stay there, she met the mother and sister of a girl in Kabul who cut off her hair, put on boy's clothes and sold things off in a tray in the market place to support her family. This reminded Ellis of children's enormous capacity for acts of courage and creative survival, when the adult world conspires to stifle their future. These incidents inspired Deborah Ellis to write the first of the Breadwinner Trilogy in Fall 2000. The Breadwinner was catapulted into the spotlight after the events of 9/11. Teachers and parents used The Breadwinner in order to help children understand what life was like for their peers in the Middle East. Ellis also wrote the sequel Parvana's Journey and followed it with Mud City (Shauzia) which is the final book in the Trilogy.The Breadwinner brings to life, an issue that has recently exploded in the international media, the reality of life under the Taliban. Young Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed out apartment building in Kabul. Her father is arrested by the Taliban and since women cannot appear to work in public, the eleven year old Parvana must masquerade as a boy to gain access to the outside world and support her family. Thus Parvana's disguise provides her a means of freedom and the means to support her family by providing a reading service for the illiterates. She meets a school friend, Shauzia, similarly disguised to be her family's sole breadwinner. Both Parvana and Shauzia decide to leave Kabul in search of the rest of the family. They are joined by two more children and a baby and this little group of young refugees is challenged to meet their basic needs of food, water and shelter as they wander through war-torn Afghanistan. Parvana and her friends frequently question the nature of war and in the end Parvana represents the courage and strength we all trust and symbolises the hope we must have in children if the world is to become a better place.
Mud City, the final book in the Trilogy shifts the focus from Parvana to Shauzia. It presents a devastating portrait of life in refugee camps, where so many children around the world are trapped, some for their whole lives. It also tells us of the children's resourcefulness which help them survive the unimaginable conditions. Shauzia, for instance, is a powerful and fiery girl who tries to take control of her own life.
Through The Breadwinner Trilogy, Deborah Ellis initiates an epistemic violence and foregrounds emancipating possibilities for Afghan women. The device of disguise, employed in the case of Parvana and Shauzia, brings to focus the strategies of Ellis's oppositional discourse. But it is not completely feminist in perspective because their putting on male disguise, does not fully suggest that they are seeking to put on the power that goes with being a man. Their disguise is essentially part of their survival strategy. The fight they have to wage is not merely against a suffocating patriarchy, but against a war-torn situation. At the same time, by unveiling the patriarchal agenda of subordinating women and children and by introducing overt and covert strategies to subvert their agenda, Ellis has pioneered a new discourse in the Afghan society. Simultaneously, her novels open up areas for new exploration and debate in future studies in literature and human society in general.
Reading suggestions?
Ellis, Deborah. The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey, Mud City
Mud City, the final book in the Trilogy shifts the focus from Parvana to Shauzia. It presents a devastating portrait of life in refugee camps, where so many children around the world are trapped, some for their whole lives. It also tells us of the children's resourcefulness which help them survive the unimaginable conditions. Shauzia, for instance, is a powerful and fiery girl who tries to take control of her own life.
Through The Breadwinner Trilogy, Deborah Ellis initiates an epistemic violence and foregrounds emancipating possibilities for Afghan women. The device of disguise, employed in the case of Parvana and Shauzia, brings to focus the strategies of Ellis's oppositional discourse. But it is not completely feminist in perspective because their putting on male disguise, does not fully suggest that they are seeking to put on the power that goes with being a man. Their disguise is essentially part of their survival strategy. The fight they have to wage is not merely against a suffocating patriarchy, but against a war-torn situation. At the same time, by unveiling the patriarchal agenda of subordinating women and children and by introducing overt and covert strategies to subvert their agenda, Ellis has pioneered a new discourse in the Afghan society. Simultaneously, her novels open up areas for new exploration and debate in future studies in literature and human society in general.
Reading suggestions?
Ellis, Deborah. The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey, Mud City
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