Category Archives: Afghan American
A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan by Nelofer Pazira
In September 1978, three months before her fifth birthday, Nelofer Pazira went to visit her father on the third day of what would become a five-month unjust imprisonment; his alleged crime, like thousands of other Afghans at the time, was not supporting the Communist government. His angry admonishment of “‘I didn’t raise you to cry on such a day,’” would shape the rest of Pazira’s life: she knew that she would need to be unfalteringly resilient and brave.
For Pazira, the privileged daughter of a medical doctor and a schoolteacher, childhood ended that day. For the next 12 years, her extended family would suffer an odyssey of uncertainty, oppression, violence, and death. Her country would become a hellish battleground, decimated by the Soviets and the mujahidin (supported with US dollars). In spite of her father’s stern protestations, the family finally escapes to Pakistan, where they live as unwanted refugees, until they are suddenly allowed to relocate to Canada in 1990.
Having endured a youth filled with repression, Pazira does not merely assimilate into the relative comfort and safety of her new country. Her connection to her homeland never wavers, driven by her search for a childhood friend, Dyana; she returns multiple times after 9/11 on journeys both professional (as a journalist and filmmaker) and deeply personal. The most touching (and surprising: SPOILER ALERT) of her journeys takes Pazira to Russia where she confronts, face-t0-shattered-face, her country’s former enemies.
Pazira’s memoir is a heart-thumping, page-whipping journey of both brutality and hope. For every faceless official with unjust power, Pazira brings to life the selfless friends and strangers who enabled her immediate family to survive, especially the impossibly young, inspiringly courageous Naseema who guides the Pazira family to the Pakistani border.
And yet, as a piece of literature – while told well-enough overall – a stronger editor might have made it a more flowing read, with less back and forth chronological jumping in the first third, and a few more details in the last third, especially during the family’s initial relocation in Canada. That said, readers will undoubtedly remember vivid chunks of Pazira’s experiences long after the final page. In a near-demonized post-9/11 world, Pazira offers an upturned, open face and humanizes her country’s troubled story.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2005 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Afghan, Afghan American, Canadian
One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature edited by Zohra Saed and Sahar Muradi, foreword by Mir Tamim Ansary
The title of this diverse anthology is taken from the opening line of Afghan fairy tales, not unlike ‘once upon a time.’ In this case, afsanah, seesanah – one story, thirty stories – “acknowledge[s] the significance that storytelling has had in our lives, its impact on our memories as Afghan Americans,” write the two editors Zohra Saed and Sahar Muradi. Serendipitously, a few weeks before picking up Story, I experienced the stupendous three-part theater marathon, The Great Game: Afghanistan, which with its 150-plus years of Afghan history culled into some 11 hours, surely enriched my reading of this collection.
Comprised of poems, short fiction, essays, excerpts from two blogs, and rich appendices (including a “Themes Index” and “Chronology of Afghan American History” – bet you didn’t know that dance legend Robert Joffrey was hapa Afghan American, or that an Afghan American invented the cooking method that became “Minute Rice”!), Story gathers the work of one of America’s newest ethnic groups. Afghan Americans number “just several hundred thousand people distributed across the country in scattered pockets, a community born of disaster halfway around the planet: in the last decades of the twentieth century, a revolution, an invasion from the north, a civil war, and finally a descent into chaos, utter chaos, which drove millions of refugees out of Afghanistan,” explains Mir Tamim Ansary in his “Foreword.”
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on December 25, 1979 looms large as the catalyst for many of the writers’ immigration memories included here. So too, of course, does 9/11 which changed for many the concept of what it means to be ‘American’; ironically, 9/11 eventually opened the door for 1.5-and second-generation Afghan Americans to return to their ancestral homeland to visit, reunite with family, to work, to even help rebuild the war-torn country.
Personal standouts include Yasmine Delawari Johnson’s “The Girl with the Green Eyes,” a poignant comparison of Johnson’s own life to a life she might have lived as she identifies with Sharbatgul, the National Geographic cover girl with the legendary piercing eyes; Khalida Sethi’s “My Mother,” in which she asks questions of her mother that Sethi answers through her own experiences that reflect her growing admiration and gratitude for her immigrant mother’s sacrifice and dedication; Sahar Muradi’s “The Things They Wait For,” which follows the quiet life of her displaced elderly grandparents; and Waheeda Samady’s “The Cab Driver’s Daughter,” which proudly honors her gentle father who bears no resemblance to the stereotypical labels of an “oppressor.”
While the contents of the collection are somewhat uneven and overall not yet mature, its absolute significance in the development in Afghan American literature cannot be diminished. With the exception of perhaps Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns) – whose work is not included, although referenced several times – who seems to have entered the literary canon fully formed, the writers here are still in the midst of finding their voices while their journeys are driven by challenging self-identification and transformative exploration.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Nonfiction, .Poetry, .Short Stories, Afghan American
However Tall the Mountain: A Dream, Eight Girls, and a Journey Home by Awista Ayub
“However tall the mountain, there’s always a road,” so goes the Afghan proverb that opens Awista Ayub‘s inspiring memoir. Thank goodness for the energy of youth to actually find the right path, then get to the top, which is just what Ayub did.
With the official fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan was suddenly open for travel: “I didn’t want to be a tourist in my own homeland,” Ayub writes in her prologue. “I wanted to make a meaningful contribution to the country in which I’d been born.” Still in her mid-20s, Ayub – who fled Afghanistan with her family when she was just 2 years old – left her comfortable chemical engineering job and founded the Afghan Youth Sports Exchange in 2003. She chronicles her debut exchange effort here … from identifying eight Kabul girls whose love of soccer burst through strict cultural restraints, who were able to travel to the other side of the world to learn to play a better game and eventually compete in the 2004 International Children’s Games in Cleveland, Ohio.
Woven into the narrative of the six weeks the Kabul girls spent Stateside, is Ayub’s own family’s escape from certain death in their native country and building an unfamiliar new life thousands of miles away. Ayub splices the girls’ American trip with some of their individual stories: Samira whose return home proves to be an unexpectedly difficult readjustment; the sisters Laila and Freshta and their family’s reverse emigration from Pakistan back to Afghanistan; Miriam’s fight with her own brother to play the game she so loves; and Robina, the oldest of the girls, whose sense of responsibility bolsters the team in the U.S. and continues back at home.
Ayub’s vision, and the lives of her eight girls, undoubtedly make for a powerful read. As the Taliban resurfaces in parts of (still) war-torn Afghanistan, the small window of relative freedom Afghan women recently regained is under threat once again. That potential loss certainly makes this title all the more poignant. In spite of the occasional stumbles with chronology and sometimes disjointed representation of the girls’ stories, overall, Ayub has managed to climb one hefty mountain. Indeed, her actual achievement in creating and shepherding this remarkable exchange overshadows the quibbles within her book.
Tidbit: Interestingly enough, the title from hardback to paper changed to Kabul Girls Soccer Club, with the same subtitle. I haven’t seen the new edition (out June this year), but I definitely prefer the original title!
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Afghan, Afghan American
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A resonating, breathtaking first novel that chronicles the relationship of two boys, born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan – both motherless, both nursed by the same woman and both lives inextricably linked, even in separation.
Review: “New and Notable Books,” AsianWeek, May 30, 2009
Readers: Adult
Published: 2003 Continue reading
Filed under ...Absolute Favorites, ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Afghan, Afghan American
Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream 1899-1999 edited by Angel Velasco Shaw and Luis H. Francia
An overwhelming, necessary, eye-witnessing anthology of the legacy of a century of colonial – political, economic, and especially social – occupation of the Philippines by the United States.
Review: “New and Notable Books,” AsianWeek, February 28, 2003
Readers: Adult
Published: 2002 Continue reading
Facebook
Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
