The Afghan monalisa : an epic of the unvoiced and anonymous women of Afghanistan / AnoshaRoyaZereh.

Abstract: "The Afghan woman has been portrayed with a mixture of concoctions in the media since the collapse of the Taliban in 2001. Afghan women have been spoken of, and they have been depicted on the covers of national magazines as voiceless, faceless, and nose-less. They have been epitomized as victims of the most atrocious human rights in the world. During the last thirty plus years of war in Afghanistan, three decades of gruesome battle, the Afghan woman has experienced the shocking dispossession from everything loved, surviving in the midst of abject poverty, foreign and civil warfare, and the staggering epoch of the Taliban. Their only crime is simply being born in Afghanistan as women in an era unfavorable to their gender...Through the soft methodology of poetry, a melodious and dynamic style, expressive of Afghan women's narratives, gracefully emerges. From the political field of the media to the nostalgic melancholy of the Afghan population living outside Afghanistan to the construal of the burka as a customary garment to the Afghan nomadic standard of living, Zereh voyages into the Afghan woman's life through poetry, facing the escalating questions of Afghan women in jeopardy"--Page 4 of cover.

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents : Introduction—1. Is the circus show over?—2. A women’s asylum—3. Story of Afghanistan—4. There is only one God—5. Hyphenated identity—6. Welcome, my daughter—7. Am I a burden?—8. The Pashtun men—9. Walk in Kabul—10.Afghan grandmother—11. Sorrow is knocking on your door!—12. Prayer—13.Obedience of an Afghan wife—14.Kabul in the midst of the rite—15.Kabul—16.Glorious Afghanistan—17.Pairi-Daeza—18. Contained by the four walls—19. Kohistan’s knoll—20.Love of pomegranate—21.Unpardonable sin—22.Spring—23.Eye—24. Child doll—25. Running blissfully toward the flame—26. The swan—27.The eight rudiments to the truth—28.The Afghan Mona Lisa—29. The bold Afghan eagle—30. Veiled, unveiled, and veiled again!—31. Forlorn—32.Lovers’ nest—33. Submit—34. Emigrant.

English