A Thousand Splendid Words

Well, it's been a journey.  A journey of a thousand splendid hours, sources, and words to get to where I am now.  And here's the final draft of my paper, titled A Thousand Splendid Suns and Sons.

I always knew that I wanted to write about Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns.  While I am not a strong advocate for feminism in America (simply because I feel that feminists should work on getting other countries to where we are now in regards to women's rights) I am a strong advocate for feminism in the Middle East.  I remember the first time I had heard that it is legal and encouraged to kill a female family member for "dishonoring" your family--such as having a baby out of wedlock.  I was appalled, and all of the sudden, advancing feminist agendas in America didn't seem that important when there are still areas in the world where they can kill their daughters for having sex--legally kill their daughters--without a trial.  It's absolutely wrong.  And there is no way to make it ever seem right.

A Thousand Splendid Suns and my essay on it is the perfect outlet for my emotions and feelings.  And I hope that it feels like I poured my heart into this essay, because I honestly tried to.  I ended up submitting my essay to the Awl, an online New York based journal that publishes hot-topic submissions.

pushing a publication.

So I know it's been a long time since I last posted, and I know that this post was due a while ago, but I wanted to wait until I knew for sure that I was going to submit my essay to a publishable venue rather than make a video.  I could make a video, but I feel that I would have more pride in my essay if I submitted it.  Not to mention, if I submit it, I think that it would be more improved than if I didn't submit it.

Professor Burton had emailed me about a week and a half ago regarding a venue I could submit it to.  It was through BYU's humanities program regarding women's studies.  Since I am writing about feminism and feminist writing by a male author, I think that this would be the perfect venue to submit to.  I know that a lot of you in the class are also writing about feminism, and so, I would like to include the email here for you to check out.  Maybe you'll also want to submit it here.

Best wishes!

Dear Colleagues: The Women's Studies Program is pleased to announce the new Susa Young Gates Award for Best Student Essay in Women's Studies. Please let your students know about this opportunity and as you read their papers at the end of the semester, please encourage your students to submit their best essays on Women's Studies for this award and our student journal. The BYU Women's Studies student journal, AWE: A Woman's Experience, is now accepting essays for next year's issue, as well as applications for new editorial staff members. Please see the information below and the attachments. Best wishes for a great end of the semester, Valerie

A Thousand Splendid Reasons To Continue

Where am I at in my writing?

Pretty much, I am comfortable with where I am.  After talking to Professor Burton, I have a much better idea of where I want to go with my writing and this paper.  I'm now going to discuss why Khaled Hosseini was so successful in writing a feminist novel in a very anti-feminist atmosphere, which I think narrows down my original broad thesis before.

With this in mind, I am glad that the sources I originally chose still apply, although I may now have to do a little more biographical information on Hosseini and his experiences in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, I will need to do a little more research on Carroll before I am comfortable with including his contributions in my essay.

Apart from that, the game is on! 

A Very Harry Potter Symposium

If you get the reference in the title, kudos to you :)

Me at the Harry Potter Studio Tour Experience in London.

So I attended the symposium workshop on Harry Potter, which was more relevant to my course of study than I had expected!  I thought that I was just going to go, sit in, and listen to Harry Potter nerds talk about Harry Potter to Harry Potter nerds like me.  But this was on the pedagogy of Harry Potter (pedagogy meaning style of education), and since I am an English teaching major, I found this very interesting.  I particularly liked the analysis on Professor Lupin's teaching style, and I discovered there was a lot to be learned from professors like Lupin (A+ professor), McGonagall (another favorite), Lockhart (honestly, he's just an idiot), and Umbridge (I won't even delve into the depths of my hatred for this creature.)

credit weknowmemes.com & Warner Bros Studio

Lupin is a prime example of an excellent teacher because JK Rowling created him to be the teacher that she had never had growing up.  Something that was brought up at the symposium was his first day lesson plans: he told them to put their textbooks away and to pull their wands out, because they were going to be doing something constructive.  According to the speakers at the symposium, teachers that engage their students immediately on the first day set the standard for the rest of the year.  Contrast this with Umbridge, who told them to pull their books out and put their wands away, and then proceeded to instruct them to read chapter 1.  Not exactly an engaging professor.  Not only that, but she was abusive and demeaning to her students.  Even though Umbridge and Lupin taught the same subject, their teaching methods were vastly different.

And with that, I leave you with the truth on the left.  Because no one can deny that it's true.

Enthusiasm About Feminism

Most of the enthusiasts I've reached out to were very responsive, and had very positive things to contribute.  One of them is someone that I know is very outspoken and political, and, as I had expected, she had a lot to contribute on the topic!  
Ah I'm so happy you included me on this!
I honestly don't know a great deal about middle eastern women issues today. After the Bush administration I realized that my perception of women's issues in the Middle East was kind of wrong. I think that in American culture this is very true. Women are constantly blamed for being raped in this country. Whether it's because of what they wore or because they were out too late. My mom actually took a women's studies class a few years ago and a Pakistani women in her class said that the rape culture in the US is much worse than it is in Pakistan. I think women around the world are given a great deal more responsibility and therefore blame. For example in the US when a women has an unexpected pregnancy it's her fault for having sex yet we rarely talk about the male contribution. In Somalia female genital mutilation is a huge part of the culture and a huge cause of death in Somalia. If a women has not been circumcised she is seen as a disgraceful, unclean women. Women are expected to have many children one after another. If a women is unable to produce many children quickly enough she has lost her worth and more often then not women die before they can raise their children. That's not really an accusation from men but it's definitely a deadly burden they are given.

I was also pleased to see how many people have been posting on my blog posts, because it gives me a major confidence booster! Tori in particular gave me several resources to use in her comment on my last blog post. Also, a huge thank you to Cristiano for suggesting this blog to submit my final paper to.

A Thousand Splendid Peculiarities

Pembroke College, Cambridge University. Photo cred MEEE.

So as I was doing my research in the library today, I realized how heavily I focus on the author of the book I chose.  Khaled Hosseini.  I wondered if I could possibly bring in more of his works to support my thesis:Male authors are the most powerful in the feminist literary movement, as it is male authors that people take the most seriously; in Victorian England, Lewis Carroll wrote about a young girl that broke all social norms; in A Thousand Splendid Suns, it was Khaled Hosseini, a male author in a Middle Eastern culture, that wrote about the oppression of women.  Ironically enough, this shows why feminism is necessary: until women can write about their own problems and be taken seriously, the women of the world will almost always certainly have to rely on men to be the journalists and authors of their inequality.

I decided to revisit The Kite Runner, the first book that Khaled Hosseini had published. It was also the first of his that I had read, back in senior year of high school. While skimming it, I found a passage that I had found peculiar at the time. "Poison tongues would flap.  And she would bear the brunt of that poison, not me—I was fully aware of the Afghan double standard that favored my gender.  Not Did you see him chatting with her? but Woooooy! Did you see how she wouldn’t let him go?  What a lochak!” (Hosseini, 146).  In this passage, a young man is talking to a young women, asking for the whereabouts of her father.  Then he asks what book she is reading, and suddenly, all eyes in the marketplace turn to the two of them because they were "chatting."  I thought that this was an interesting interjection, but now I see the reason for it.  Hosseini was already aware of where he wanted to bring his writing next: to feminist Islamic issues.  And so, I wanted to gain a better understanding of Islamic feminism and its history.

A Thousand Splendid Pseudonyms

Photo credit Krista Edwards 2013.

I begin my essay with a simple question:

Why do male writers seem to dominate the literary world?  Even Joanne Rowling, famed author of the Harry Potter series, took on two male pseudonyms to publish her work: J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith.  In this essay, I explore why male writers have more success with feminist issues than female writers, especially in Middle Eastern literature.

            Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns tells the story of two Afghani women in 1980’s Afghanistan to present-day Afghanistan.  Khaled Hosseini had previously published The Kite Runner, a novel about the relationship between fathers and sons, something that would appeal to a Middle Eastern male audience.  After becoming a worldwide best-selling authors, he publishes A Thousand Splendid Suns, which tackles more serious topics such as how the law in the Islamic countries (that follow Shari’a law) treat women.  Hosseini does this because he knows that he is one of the few people in the world with the power to bring this to the world’s attention.  In Islamic countries that currently practice Shari’a law, women have no power.  For example, in Iran, a fourteen year old girl named Malala Yoosuf was shot in the head by the Taliban for promoting women’s education.  Khaled Hosseini is perfectly aware of the problems surrounding women if they speak out; it is why he, as a feminist, feels it is necessary to write for the feminist cause.

A Thousand Splendid Venues to submit to.

LOL JK not a thousand more like three.

So, first things first.  I posted my question to my peers that commented on my original post on Facebook, and sadly, none of them responded.  So then I posted it to others that I thought might be interested in this topic.  To my surprise, I had three people respond that were very, very invested in Islamic feminism.

A Thousand Splendid Ideas

Now I feel really arrogant and conceited, because my ideas are not a thousand nor are they splendid!  But I think I am going somewhere with this!

start to 1/100 finish.

Originally I was thinking about comparing Victorian morals to Middle Eastern moral values today, but I knew that that wasn't exactly the most attention-grabbing paper topic.  It wasn't until we started undergoing all the research for this paper that I came up with a more interesting paper topic that I would like to research--why people take male authors more seriously in feminist literature.  When I started thinking about it, I noticed that there are many female authors that wrote under male pseudonyms (JK Rowling-her initialized name sounds androgynous, so really people don't know if she's male or female if they were just given "JK Rowling;" she also wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith when she published The Cuckoo's Calling, then there are the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, who wrote under Currer, Ellis and Acton.  Also, we can't forget Mary Anne Evans writing under the name of George Elliot.)  Although Khaled Hosseini is definitely a male author writing about female problems in society, I want to explore all angles of the male author writing about feminism, and why female writers can't write about feminism and still be taken seriously.

At any rate, I have a lot of more research and perspectives to look into. See my paper shell here.

A Thousand Splendid Friends on Facebook

Queen Rania of Jordan with Michelle Obama.  H.M. Queen Rania is one
of my role models, being a very progressive woman in the Middle East.
Creative Commons 2.5

Due to Western thoughts and ideas, feminism has progressed far in this nation and in other westernized nations. However, in countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, and other Middle Eastern nations, the idea of feminism is all but foreign to them. The book I am studying, called A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, states, "Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman." (7) Do you find this to be true in American culture still? What about Middle Eastern culture (if you are a MESA major)?

I plan to circulate this on a private message forum on Facebook. Originally, I was a Middle Eastern Studies / Arabic (MESA) major, but I have since changed to English. However, I still have many of those friends in my friend group, but haven't talked to them in a long while, so it would be good to reconnect. Many of these friends have been to Jordan, Afghanistan, Syria, etc., as part of their major, so it would be good to get some insight. Furthermore, I plan to include some of the people who responded to my original post on Facebook to see what they might say, since they have already demonstrated an interest.

However, what about you? Do you think that women are often used as scapegoats for male accusations, which may or may not be entirely sound?

A Thousand Splendid Processes

Khaled Hosseini slowly tries to introduce feminism into his novels, knowing that if he blatantly states it, it would not be well-received by the educated Middle Eastern population--namely, men.

Key Passages:
"...Nana had been one of the housekeepers.  Until her belly began to swell.  When that happened, Nana said, the collective gasp of Jalil's family sucked the air out of Herat.  His in-laws swore blood would flow.  The wives demanded that he throw her out.  Nan's own father, who was a lowly stone carver in the nearby village of Gul Daman, disowned her.  Disgraced, he packed his things and boarded a bus to Iran, never to be seen or heard from again." (6)
"Learn this now and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman.  Always." (7)
"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls." (89)
"I wonder," the young Talib said.  "God has made us differently, you women and us men.  Our brains are different.  You are not able to think like we can.  Western doctors and their science have proven this.  This is why we require only one male witness but two female ones." (324)

Analysis: Hosseini shows in the very beginning what the tone of this novel will be with the two passages on pages six and seven.  However, he doesn't touch on it again until well after the reader has fallen into the story and read the entire biography of Laila and Mariam, and by that point, the reader is clearly able to see the discrimination and mistreatment women are forced to go under.  For good measure, he includes the poem that the title line is taken from.  By doing this, Hosseini also underlines the main theme: the fact that men hide behind the women: "and the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls."  Kabul, the city being talked about in this poem, is female.  The suns/sons aren't hiding behind her walls for protection; they are using her (and other women) as scapegoats to protect their pride and honor (re: page 6 passage).  Hosseini details this in the last pages of the novel; first in a conversation between a police officer and Mariam and Laila; then in the trial of Mariam (seen above); and last in her sentencing (not detailed here).

A Thousand Splendid Reasons to Use Social Media

I love that we are all posting on this blog, because I feel that there are so many of us writing about feminism (albeit in different genres and areas of feminism) that I think we can still help one another out with our writing in terms of feminist literary theory.  For example, Morgan's post discusses post-colonialism and feminism; Tori's post discusses two female characters that are not in control of their environment; I remember Sally saying she wanted to discuss feminism in Jane Eyre on Digital Dialogue, although I'm not sure if that is still the direction she wanted to go.  Likewise, I want to discuss how male authors are the strongest writers in feminist literary theory, because people are more likely to take a male author seriously (especially in Carroll's Victorian England, or in Khaled Hosseini's 1980 to present-day Afghanistan.)

See left hyperlink for full post

Social Media is a fantastic new way to communicate and circulate ideas.  I was discussing my thesis with my "homie" Will, who is on tumblr, and he directed me here: I need feminism because J. K. Rowling... .  This short post has been reblogged 12,000+ times and I had never thought about this before, but I feel that something like this strengthens my argument that male writers are more powerful in feminism than female writers.  Harry Potter is also something that could be viewed as slightly feminism (let's be real; without Hermione's intellect and cleverness, Harry would have died multiple times).  But the reason this is significant is because even now, most people refer to JK Rowling as JK Rowling; not Joanne Rowling or Jo Rowling.  In the beginning, no one would have taken a female writer seriously; to make her more masculine, the publishing company had her use her initials (Her only real initial is J for Joanne; the publishing company made her choose another one, so she chose "K," for her grandmother Kathleen.)  There are many other examples of this in Victorian England (the Brontë sisters used male names when they originally published their novels).

With this in mind, I was able to rewrite my thesis: Male authors are the most powerful in the feminist literary movement, as it is male authors that people take the most seriously; in Victorian England, Lewis Carroll wrote about a young girl that broke all social norms; in A Thousand Splendid Suns, it was Khaled Hosseini, a male author in a Middle Eastern culture, that wrote about the oppression of women.  Ironically enough, this shows why feminism is necessary: until women can write about their own problems and be taken seriously, the women of the world will almost always certainly have to rely on men to be the journalists and authors of their inequality.

Huggin Hill, EC4, City of Westminster, London

Michela and I at Huggin Hill, London

Growing up, I really hated sharing my personal work with others.  As I've come into college, however, and seen that nearly everyone dislikes sharing their personal works with their peers, I've grown to be more confident.  However, it is still a little disheartening when you share your work, your pride and joy, and the person you are sharing it with doesn't appreciate it.  That is why I have two really close people I know I can rely on to genuinely care about my grades and what I am working on.

I find it fairly easy to talk to my friends about my writing, seeing as it's something most of my friends also have to go through (the majority of the people I call "homies" are English, Public Relations, or Journalism majors).  One of my closest "homies" is Michela, and she and I became good friends after going to London last summer.  She, like most of us in this class, is an English major, and she is a phenomenal editor and writer.  We share all of our writing ideas with each other, including our creative writing ideas (most people are most insecure about sharing creative writing or original writing, as opposed to research or analytical essays).  Michela's one of my best go-to-girls for opinions because she will tell me exactly what she thinks without fear of offending me, which is often what writers need.

Tweethis: Feminist Writing by Male Authors

Because of the intense stigma against women and feminist movements in the modern day Middle Eastern region of the world, a male writer must write about feminism in order for the societal problems surrounding gender roles to get any attention--as in Victorian England, when Lewis Carroll, a man, sought to undo gender roles in Alice in Wonderland.

In addition, I have already begun to circulate interest in the topic on my Facebook account. I asked for peoples' opinions and what they know about feminism in the Middle East, and to my surprise, I received a lot of attention and comments--many from people I did not know I was still in contact with!  Here is just a sample of the comments.  I figure, with the people from these comments, I can use them as social proof when I start to really write my essay.  I also had a few people private message me about my topic, which is fantastic--but I will not post those since they were privately messaged.