Eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. Parvana’s father — a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed — works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left without someone who can earn money or even shop for food.As conditions for the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy, and become the breadwinner.
This book was hard to read - the atrocities happening in Afghanistan seem unbelievable in our modern time: women's freedoms being limited to just their homes, unless accompanied by a man, having to cover up in full while out, not being able to go to school or hold jobs, not allowed to make noise or have a voice, etc.
But this book does important work shedding some light on the experiences of Afghans at the hands of extremists. It's an important work that children and adults should be exposed to and I'm glad I was able to read it.
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