My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird - bookrastinating.com

Hardcover, 288 pages

English language

Published Oct. 18, 2022 by Grand Central Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-1-5387-2682-2
OCLC Number:: 1296941321

This collection introduces extraordinary voices from the country’s two main linguistic groups (Pashto and Dari) with original, vital and unexpected stories to tell, developed over two years through UNTOLD’s Write Afghanistan project. My Pen Is the Wing of a Birdcomes at a pivotal moment in Afghanistan’s history, when these voices must be heard.

With an Introduction by BBC Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet and an Afterword by Lucy Hannah

2 editions

Taylor Drew reviewed My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird by Various

Heartbreaking with an undercurrent of love and hppe

4 stars

Normally I try to write reviews pretty soon after I finish reading a book. I know there are people to wait to review until after they've finished processing a book, but I'm more interested in knowing how I felt about the book immediately afterwards. While it may be true that with a few days, I may look more kindly upon a book, that doesn't mean I actually enjoyed it when I was reading it, and it's actually very rare that I feel the need to change my personal ratings.

But for this one, I waited for a little while. Part of this was because I finished reading the book at midnight and I need to go to sleep, but part of it was simply that the The stories in this collection had a certain kind of weight that was a bit hard to think about completely off the cuff …

Normally I try to write reviews pretty soon after I finish reading a book. I know there are people to wait to review until after they've finished processing a book, but I'm more interested in knowing how I felt about the book immediately afterwards. While it may be true that with a few days, I may look more kindly upon a book, that doesn't mean I actually enjoyed it when I was reading it, and it's actually very rare that I feel the need to change my personal ratings.

But for this one, I waited for a little while. Part of this was because I finished reading the book at midnight and I need to go to sleep, but part of it was simply that the The stories in this collection had a certain kind of weight that was a bit hard to think about completely off the cuff (especially at midnight).

I think basically every collection in this collection was sad in some way. More or less every single story references war or death or suicide bombing or intense misogyny. It wasn't easy to read and I wouldn't suggest anybody read it for personal enjoyment.

That being said, there were still so many moments of joy to be found and the love that the authors have for their country was palpable. From the outside looking in, there's not a lot of hope when someone looks at the situation in Afghanistan, especially when it comes to the rights of women and girls, as well as any member of the LGBTQ+, but the authors of these stories remind that the fight is worth fighting for, and there's a lot of hope in that.

I spent a lot of this collection remembering videos, feed to me by the Instagram algorithm, of white Christian men visiting Kabul and bragging about how amazing it was while they're escorted by somebody carrying an AK-47. The most notable part about every single one of these videos isn't the AK-47s though, it's the fact that there are no women or girls in sight.

Yet I see the love those same women have for their country in the words in this book, and I want so much for them to live the reality it is that they seek.

A hard collection, but very worth the read.