Chido Murambiwa, Grade 11
UWC Waterford Kamhlaba
A Thousand Splendid Suns is hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read. Author Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan-American, published his book A Thousand Splendid Suns in 2007. After a family tragedy, Mariam, a teenager from Herat, is coerced into wedlock with a shoemaker from Kabul. Laila, who was born a generation later and has a reasonably comfortable life, meets Mariam when a similar tragedy compels her to accept her husband's marriage proposal. The majority of the attention is given to female characters and how they fit into Afghan society today. On May 22, 2007, A Thousand Splendid Suns was published. In its first week of sales, more than one million copies were sold. It became a number one New York Times bestseller fifteen weeks after its release. It also garnered positive universal critical acclaim from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, as well as favourable reviews from other publications. Over a million copies were sold in the first week of sales. The theatrical release of the book's film version, for which Columbia Pictures acquired the film rights in 2007, took place on February 1 at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California. It is a domestic fiction novel.
The first and only time I read it (it’s a very triggering book), I remember thinking that these women were the strongest people I’ve ever read about. Their lives and everything about them felt so real in an uncomfortable way. I felt so much pride and sorrow for them. The way they always had obstacles yet still managed to get up and continue moving forward was hard to read but a reality. It spoke on so many topics that I had seen in many communities back home.
Mariam and Laila reminded me of my grandmothers, and it broke my heart because it was always one thing to hear jokes about the trials they had faced. However, reading in detail about a similar experience they had to endure crushed me. I devoured the book because the problems they faced, although relevant to Afghanistan, were close to home. The book spoke of issues people tended to stray away from or were misrepresented. I cried buckets worth of tears. I had flashbacks to my grandmother telling a story similar to Laila's or Miriam's, and it felt suffocating. I felt like I was deflated when I was done reading the book.
The book had been frequently recommended to me until I saw a video of a girl reading it with her mother. Their mother had experienced exactly what the characters had experienced. She was bawling her eyes. She couldn’t even speak. She just smiled and said, "Read it." Despite her facial expressions being dissolved in tears, that’s what pushed me to read it.
"Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. always.” Mariam’s mother, during the scene, explains to Mariam that her life would always be hard as long as there was a man leading it. The men in the book were on different spectrums, but a consistent factor was the validation they got, either from degrading women or supporting them. Some justified their abusive tendencies by saying that it was natural and a woman was expected to meet the needs of a man. The main characters had opposing ideas of how they expected to be treated by men, which caused conflict, but it highlighted so many overriding red flags from the male characters in the book.
The book taught me that sometimes you don’t have a choice over your future, but you can take steps to push forward, and being a feminist is not a certain genre only, but it comes in so many forms. If you want to understand what it’s like to be a woman, read the book.
Picture Courtesy: Pin by Ru on Stuff in 2022 | Favorite book quotes, Sun quotes, Self love quotes. (n.d.). Pinterest; pin.it. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://pin.it/4BjBnQD
The first and only time I read it (it’s a very triggering book), I remember thinking that these women were the strongest people I’ve ever read about. Their lives and everything about them felt so real in an uncomfortable way. I felt so much pride and sorrow for them. The way they always had obstacles yet still managed to get up and continue moving forward was hard to read but a reality. It spoke on so many topics that I had seen in many communities back home.
Mariam and Laila reminded me of my grandmothers, and it broke my heart because it was always one thing to hear jokes about the trials they had faced. However, reading in detail about a similar experience they had to endure crushed me. I devoured the book because the problems they faced, although relevant to Afghanistan, were close to home. The book spoke of issues people tended to stray away from or were misrepresented. I cried buckets worth of tears. I had flashbacks to my grandmother telling a story similar to Laila's or Miriam's, and it felt suffocating. I felt like I was deflated when I was done reading the book.
The book had been frequently recommended to me until I saw a video of a girl reading it with her mother. Their mother had experienced exactly what the characters had experienced. She was bawling her eyes. She couldn’t even speak. She just smiled and said, "Read it." Despite her facial expressions being dissolved in tears, that’s what pushed me to read it.
"Learn this now and learn it well. Like a compass facing north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. always.” Mariam’s mother, during the scene, explains to Mariam that her life would always be hard as long as there was a man leading it. The men in the book were on different spectrums, but a consistent factor was the validation they got, either from degrading women or supporting them. Some justified their abusive tendencies by saying that it was natural and a woman was expected to meet the needs of a man. The main characters had opposing ideas of how they expected to be treated by men, which caused conflict, but it highlighted so many overriding red flags from the male characters in the book.
The book taught me that sometimes you don’t have a choice over your future, but you can take steps to push forward, and being a feminist is not a certain genre only, but it comes in so many forms. If you want to understand what it’s like to be a woman, read the book.
Picture Courtesy: Pin by Ru on Stuff in 2022 | Favorite book quotes, Sun quotes, Self love quotes. (n.d.). Pinterest; pin.it. Retrieved July 26, 2022, from https://pin.it/4BjBnQD
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