Afghan woman in the mirror of literature Geographical criticism reading in A Thousand Splendid Suns and Kabul Beauty School

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of French and Russian, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

10.22059/jor.2023.350892.2357

Abstract

Afghan women have experienced varying circumstances throughout different periods, and during the two eras of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, their activities and presence in society have been severely repressed. Deprivation of education, work, and social participation, confinement at home, forced marriages, violence for non-compliance, and other issues are among the challenges faced by Afghan women. For this reason, writers and women’s rights advocates, through novels and articles, depict Afghanistan’s patriarchal society and defend the women of this land by narrating real stories. Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan-American author, attempts to represent the plight of these women and the patriarchal atmosphere in Afghanistan in his famous novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. Deborah Rodriguez, an American hairdresser, in her book The Kabul Beauty School, recounts her memories of staying in Afghanistan and portrays the role of women in this land along with their suffering and struggles through the lens of literature. In this context, the role of place and space in shaping these two literary works, with the aid of geographic criticism, is highly significant. This research aims to examine the representation of "self" and "other" in these two works and their manifestations within the space of Afghanistan. It also seeks to explore the impact of post-colonial studies on analyzing the perspectives of migrants versus local viewpoints. Additionally, the study investigates the transition from depicting real space to imagined space regarding Afghan women in the mind of the Western migrant and its influence on the reader.

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References

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Research in Contemporary World Literature
Volume 29, Issue 2
November 2024
Pages 673-688

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