Thousand Splendid Suns

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Recommended: Roles of women in the middle east

A relevant 21st century literary piece that affected my thoughts is the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. The story is based on true Afghanistan events and revolves around the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan. This book is relevant and thought-provoking because it portrays how women in Afghanistan were mistreated and not protected by their government. A Thousand Splendid Suns opened my eyes to the lack of legal rights in place for women in Afghanistan. In the book Hosseini discusses the rules that the Taliban has forced into practice. A few of these rules include that women could not gain an education or could not leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. These rules resonated and made me realize that women in other countries did not have the rights of women in the western world. Hosseini’s story made me realize that women in the Middle East are not treated with basic human dignity, and it made me want to take a stand.
All of the new information that A Thousand Splendid Suns presented to me, prompted me to do research of my own about women's right in Afghanistan. Through research, I discovered the prominent gender rights movement: feminism. Prior to my research, I did not understand the importance of feminism. I ignorantly believed …show more content…

Because of my adamant Christian beliefs, I disagreed with some aspects of feminism; however, the more I researched, the more I realized what I had been taught were merely stereotypes of feminism. First-wave feminism concerns women in the western world gaining the right to vote and having the same legal rights as their male counterparts. Feminism, now in the third-wave, has evolved into the fight against female discrimination on social, political, and economic grounds. For example, women are still mistreated in settings like the workplace and suffer from the wage-gap. This further strengthens the need for

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