In a Nutshell: A brilliant OwnVoices anthology, narrating stories about the ordinary citizens' lives in Afghanistan. Each story is written by a female Afghan author.

There's no denying that life in Afghanistan has changed over the last decades. Hit by one political catastrophe after another, most Afghanistan commoners are now stuck on the base tier of Maslow's needs-hierarchy theory, focusing more on survival than on anything else. And as is the norm in such situations, it's women and girls who are hit the hardest.

This collection of twenty-three stories, written by eighteen Afghan women, shows us an inside view of ordinary life in Afghanistan. The stories were originally written in Dari and Pashto, the two official languages. They've been translated to English by local Afghan translators, and hence have a touch of simplicity as well as authenticity to their tone.

Not all the stories have a typical plot progression. Some are more like an episode, offering a little glimpse into a day or week of the central character. The tales highlight a daily life that isn't routine, where one doesn't know how one will survive against the natural elements or political elements or military elements or patriarchal elements. A few of the stories, though fictional, are based on real-life incidents, and these are the most hard-hitting.

While each story is written by a female writer, the main protagonist isn't always a woman. But no matter who the lead character, every story is underlined by a sense of loss, worrying over the what-is and wondering about the what-if. Can we expect happy endings in such a collection? Not really. But a couple of the stories do offer hopeful endings, which is the best we can expect given the circumstances.

It's worth noting that these stories were written before the Taliban returned to power. So no matter what atrocities and struggles are mentioned in this anthology, things are even worse now. For safety reasons, there's no personal information about the writers, a few of whom have chosen to write under pen names. This makes the title even more ironic and poignant, as their pens truly are the wings through which these writers have soared in their thoughts.

The stories have been divided across four untitled sections, but I simply could not figure out the basis of the compartmentalisation. Not that it matters much on the macro level, but I prefer understanding the editorial choices in an anthology.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Of the twenty-three stories, ten stories reached or crossed the 4-star mark, and most of the rest were clustered around the 3-star rating. Here are my favourites, with 4.5 stars and above:
🌷 Dogs Are Not to Blame - Masouma Kawsari – Such a sensitive story written from a male pov! - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫
🌷 The Late Shift - Sharifa Pasun – When routine life is not routine anymore, what do you do? You make the best of it. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫
🌷 The Most Beautiful Lips in the World - Elahe Hosseini – I truly didn’t see the direction this story took. The turn in the narrative left me shocked. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
🌷 My Pillow’s Journey of Eleven Thousand, Eight Hundred, and Seventy-six Kilometers - Farangis Elyassi – Never thought a story about a pillow would be so poignant. Loved the whole experience. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
🌷 Ajah - Fatema Khavari – Almost like a fable, highlighting the power of determination - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

Strongly recommended to anyone looking for a powerful OwnVoices work, giving voice to women who are rarely given a voice.

3.85 stars, based on the average of my rating for each story.

My thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the DRC of “My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women is a project of Untold, which "works together with writers marginalised by community or conflict, to develop and amplify their work.... Untold supports these writers to develop their writing; share their stories with wider communities in their own languages and reach new global audiences in translation." (Quotation is from their home page: http://untold-stories.org/about/ )

Work on this anthology began before the US withdrawl and the retaking of the country by the Taliban. Six of the eighteen writers featured in this collection have since found ways to leave the country, but all these pieces were originally written in Afghanistan and are reflections of these women's experiences in their homeland. These pieces were originally written in Pashto and Dari, the official languages of Afghanistan. Untold's role in producing the anthology has been to support women who want to write and to provide translations of their work to make it accessible to an international audience.

These stories make for deeply sobering reading and depict the options—or the lack of options—available to Afdghani women. Some of the work is based on folk tales or depicts the period before the current return to Taliban government, which makes for an interesting variety of perspectives, but the bulk of it comes across as tales of contemporary, day-to-day life. Entering this world challenges the reader and demands a response beyond "I'm so lucky that's not me." These stories demand that we not just provide long-distance witness to these women's lives, but that we we consider concrete actions that might provide meaningful change and find ways to use the power we have, even if at times we feel powerless. That's a tall order, but an essential one.

By contributing to My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird, these writers remind us of the global challenges faced by women—and that any struggle for human rights needs to be based in lived experiences, not outsiders' ideas about "how things are" or "what needs to be done."

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

4.5 stars
Very powerful short story collection, composed of 18 short stories by all female Afghan authors. There are young women who yearn to go to school, widows who mourn their lost husbands and don't want to remarry, men who work as scribes for court complaints and barely make a living to get by, mothers who are separated by continents from their children, women who have been forced to immigrate to the United States and can never find the same comfort and happiness they left behind, and more.

The stories have very distinct voices and are well written. Some come to a satisfying conclusion, others are cut short what feels like too soon, but are done just right in a literary manner. There were some stories I connected with more than others, unsurprisingly, but there was only one story that I didn't really like or connect to; every other one had a little something that touched and moved me.

Highly recommend this collection.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy.

My Pen is the Wing of a Bird is a beautiful collections of stories written by Afghan women. I enjoyed reading about the people, and not focused on politics or war. Of course these things greatly affected the women, but I liked the character studies.

An anthology of short stories by Afghan women. Each women sharing their life stories and they bring the reader into their world with unique storytelling. The stories varies, showing their strength and tenacity and they mesh well together in this anthology. A strong and special collection of stories that are vastly profound.

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for this review copy, I received this review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

“One of the many joys of reading is that the literature of a world far from our own has the potential to alter how we see ourselves.”

- Lucy Hannah, Founder of Untold Narratives (from the Afterword of My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird)

My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird is an anthology of eighteen stories written by women writers based in Afghanistan (some of whom have managed to leave in light of recent upheaval). In simple prose, they tell us stories inspired by the daily lives ( some based on real-life events) of those living in Afghanistan. The stories are set in various periods varying from the 1980s to the present day and feature men and women in their homeland as they brave the trials and tribulations of war, political upheaval, poverty, oppressive societal norms, misogyny, discrimination and much more.

In the story “I Don’t Have The Flying Wings” by Batool Haidari (translated from the Pashto by Parwana Fayyaz), a young boy, struggles with his gender identity and is punished when he is discovered trying to be himself when alone at home.
“I wanted to be seen; I was hidden from everyone else, but I wanted to be seen, myself for myself.”

In “D is for Daud” by Anahita Gharib Nawaz (translated from the Dari by Zubair Popalzai), a school teacher risks everything to help a young boy whose sister is being abused by her husband.
“When I see her, I understand why women are called siah sar. She represents the true sense of the word: one who is destined for darkness.”

In “My Pillow’s Journey of Eleven Thousand, Eight Hundred and Seventy-Six Kilometres” by Farangis Elyassi, (translated from the Dari by Dr. Zubair Popalzai), a woman who manages to escape her war-torn homeland and move to America, attributes her sleeplessness to her favorite pillow she has left behind and vows to carry it back with her on her next visit.
“I have finally accepted that my peaceful sleep was not bound to my pillow: my sleep was bound to the warm embrace of my country, it was bound to visiting my beloved mother, it was bound to the chatter I shared with my sisters, to the friendship and silliness I shared with my brother, to the laughter I enjoyed with my friends. My peaceful sleep was because of the small service I used to do for my country, because of my streets, because of a sense of freedom one can feel only in one’s own country.”

“The Red Boots”, by Naeema Ghani, (translated from the Pashto by Shekiba Habib and Zarghuna Kargar), revolves around a young girl whose happiness knows no bounds when her father buys her a second-hand pair of red boots, even though they are too small for her feet.
"It doesn’t matter what colour your boots are–they could be red or black or blue. Or maybe for you it’s a dress or a notepad or an umbrella that you chose. The important thing is that you chose. And I chose a pair of boots."

In “Blossom” by Zainab Akhlaqi, (translated from the Dari by Dr. Negeen Kargar), A father who opposed his daughter’s education in favor of her getting married relents after his daughter adamantly decides to go back to school after it is bombed and many of her friends have perished.
“We don’t know how long any of us has. Go, my child, and live the way you want to live.”

In “Ajah” by Fatema Khavari (translated from the Dari by Dr. Zubair Popalzai), a woman motivates the other women in the village to band together to dig ditches to save their village from flooding.
“They till the land; they raise your children. They lift buckets of water from the well every day. How difficult is digging a tiny channel when we women come together?”

In the other stories we meet a single mother who braves explosions to go to work every day, a recently widowed mother who decides to fight being forced into marrying her brother-in-law, a young girl is sent to a wedding as a suicide bomber, a woman takes drastic measures when her husband takes a second wife because of all her eight children are daughters, a group of women who value their self-respect prefer to quit a much-needed job after one of them is harassed by their male manager and a man who returns home after years of captivity only to find that his family has moved on.

The authors and translators (most of the stories were originally written in Pashto or Dari) have done a magnificent job of painting a deeply intimate picture of what life looks like in a land that is so different from our own. These stories do not delve into detail about the politics or leadership in Afghanistan but tell us about the people in their own voices. Much time and effort went into this endeavor – from collecting these stories, coordinating with the authors and translators and dealing with security concerns (which is why details about the authors have not been provided and while some authors have used their real names , others have published their stories under pen names). It is impossible to read this book and not be affected by it. I was in turn saddened, enraged and incredibly moved as I read this book and needed to take breaks in between. This is the kind of book that makes you pause and reflect and appreciate the freedoms and privileges we enjoy and, more often than not, take for granted. This book should be read, shared and talked about because these voices need to be heard. I must applaud the efforts of Untold Narratives CIC whose Write Afghanistan Project made it possible for these authors to share their stories with the world.

“Afghanistan has never been heard or understood. Who are these people? And what do they want? How did they endure forty-two years of war? To find the answers, we must talk about these questions. And we would like to share our words with you. Make our words familiar to you.” –(from the Afterword; written by an author who has contributed to this collection.)

Many thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for the digital copy of this powerful and thought-provoking collection of stories. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This book is due to be released (U.S) on October 18, 2022.

These are heartbreaking stories - fiction - but based on actual occurrences. Eighteen Afghan women’s works written in their native Pashto or Dari language were translated for this deeply impactful anthology. Each story packs a punch and surprisingly so. Despite their brevity, the stories convey so much - about life, hardship, sacrifice, strength, endurance and triumph. Women and girls experience abuse and hardship daily with little to look forward to - life, and simply living is difficult. Despite all this, as well as writing in secret, these women writers have done a tremendous job. They have poured their creativity spirit forth in this collection of stories and all the authors are to be commended for their wonderful ability to tell their stories through amazing storytelling. The challenges overcome to bring these stories to us readers is truly amazing. The following stories were especially impactful: “Daughter Number Eight,” “I Don’t Have the Flying Wings,” “Bad Luck,” “D for Daud” (this was the most seering and my favorite), “Khurshid Khanum, Rise and Shine.” Many thanks to the authors, translators, publisher, all those who brought this book to fruition, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was beautiful! Yes, as per any story collection, some resonated with me more than others. But my rating is taking into account that these are not season writers and the personal nature of the subject matter. Not only that but the impact that some of these stories had on me. There is a raw honesty in every word of this collection, even if I didn't resonate with the story itself, I often still was hit by the emotional impact of storytelling and how important it is for the human soul to tell stories and hear stories. I loved this, and hope there is more projects like this in the future of publishing.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

"I am not scared of rockets, I am scared of God."

This collection blew me away. The short stories included were written by Afghani women in either Dari or Pastho, and translated into English. I don't really want to say anything about the content because I frankly don't think I could do it justice. Let's just say that every story was powerful, and many of them were simply vignettes of daily life, which makes their impact so impressive. All of the stories were pretty short, but I found myself only reading one or two a day because I had to sit with them before moving on.

The ARC version didn't include the Introduction, which I would've liked to have read, but I'll definitely be picking up a physical copy of this book, so no harm done.

I don't normally discuss the Afterward of novels in my reviews, but you do a disservice if you don't read the Afterward here. Writer Lucy Hannah points out that there is no "About the Writers" section in this anthology, though there obviously should be. Tragically, the situations of many included writers don't allow for transparency, and several of the stories were written under a pen name. The Afterward discusses the topic of translation, and how having these stories translated into English gives these women a voice in the international community for basically the first time. One of the included authors wrote a letter about how she couldn't own up to her work and the end of that letter is so moving that I wanted to include it below:

"There is a story told by Maulana Balkhi, whom you may know as Rumi, in the Masnavi. A Persian, an Arab, a Turk and a Greek were travelling together, and they received a present of a dirhem. The Persian said he wished to buy "angur" with it, the Arab said he would buy "inab," while the Turk and the Greek were for buying "uzum" and "astaphil," respectively. They argued as to which of them would get his way, until a wise man, who spoke all their languages, intervened. He explained that they all wanted grapes.

I also want grapes."

Pick up this collection, I guarantee you won't be disappointed that you did.

This powerful collection of stories by Afghani women gives us a glimpse of life in the country that has been in the midst of turmoil for decades. The stories we get are of women fighting to be seen, heard, trusted and valued. Some of the stories are small scenes of violence, longer passages of what it's like to live in a war zone and some stories that are just like any girl in any country. A few of the stories are based on real events but many just allude to the day today fears and joys of Afghani women. The stories resonate in some ways and shake you in others but most of all bring out empathy and compassion for these women. 

My favorites were Ajah, about a smart woman trying to save her town and prove that women are as capable as men; My Pillow's Journey of Eleven Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy Six Kilometers about immigrating and understanding what it means to be home; and The Red Boots about a little girl and her dreams.

Thanks to Grand Central Pub via Netgalley for advanced access to this collection. All opinions above are my own.

This short story collection...wow...what can I say? It took me a long time to get through because there are some stories that are absolutely gut wrenching. But don't let that dissuade you, there are also stories that are hopeful. Overall this collection is incredible. Although I would love to write more, I don't think my words can do it justice. Just read it and experience it for yourself.
Thank you, Netgalley, for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A powerful collection of short stories by Afghan women, many of them incredibly heartbreaking and stories that will stay with me for a long time. It's rare that we get to read something by writers out of Aghanistan or about Afghanistan that isn't a sterile piece about war. Their bravery in sharing their writing is inspiring and I enjoyed this book so much, highly recommend for anyone interested in women's stories around the globe or Afghanistan in general.