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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Girl-to-boy traditions: The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and Sworn Virgin

17/11/2015

12 Comments

 
As the middle child in a family of five daughters in a village in contemporary Afghanistan, Rahima knows first-hand how gender shapes people’s lives. For a few short years she gets to experience the world from the other side: dressed as a boy, she is able to attend school, wrestle with her friends and run errands to the market, while her sisters stay home, helping their mother cook and clean and avoid the blows of their opium-addicted father. But the local warlord has taken a fancy to her and, at thirteen, she is forced to become a girl again and join his three other wives under the disapproving gaze of his mother. All that sustains her through the cruelties of married life is the story she’s been told of her great-great-grandmother, Shekiba, facially disfigured as an infant, mistreated by her extended family when she loses her parents and siblings to cholera, who becomes a guard of the king’s harem.
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The Pearl That Broke Its Shell is very much an issue-based novel, but what important issues these are. The American daughter of Afghani parents who had witnessed their country go backwards in their own lifetimes, it’s easy to envisage Nadia Hashimi’s sense of mission to bring this story to the world. The dual timeline brings an extra poignancy, as Shekiba’s tragedy is echoed by Rahima’s a century on. Shekiba’s story ends with her witnessing the queen remove her headscarf as the king announces that veiling is not integral to Islam while, even as assistant to a female MP in the new parliament, Rahima suffers the enduring restrictions on women’s movement and choice. It’s a story of misogyny, corruption and drug addiction; like Gavin Weston’s Niger-set novel, Harmattan, it’s a protest against child marriage and denial of education to girls. It’s also about the resilience of women, and how much they will fight for a claim on their own lives. It’s one that makes me thankful to have been born at a time and place where the struggle hasn’t been anywhere near so hard.

I was fascinated to learn, through this novel, of the tradition of bacha posh in which, through the simple act of a change of clothes and a haircut, a girl can be transformed into a boy. This occurs not in response to a girl’s sense of gender dysphoria – in a society in which girls’ feelings are of no consequence, and they’ve been taught that they’re worthless since birth, how could it? – but as a practical solution for a family with only daughters in a culture in which certain activities can only be undertaken by males. Condoned by the wider community, it’s a practice that perpetuates gender inequality by exploiting loopholes, as well as a place of refuge for the less demure girls, instead of changing the system as a whole. Recalling the hijra of India (although it’s possible that boy-to-girl transitions serve a different function than girl-to-boy), I’m wondering how widespread this practice is in cultures with a rigid gender divide. So I went back to my bookshelves to pick up another novel on the theme that had been sitting there for some time.
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A month after 9/11, Hana, an Albanian in her midthirties, is queueing to get through passport control at Washington International airport. It’s not only the prospect of starting a new life in America that’s making her anxious, but something similar to what freaked her out when she needed the toilet in the arrivals lounge: according to her passport, she’s Ms Doda, but in dress and mannerism she is Mark, the chain-smoking, raki-drinking, truck-driving man she’s been since the age of nineteen. (Sounds familiar.)

Hana joins her cousin in the small flat she shares with her husband and disarmingly direct teenage daughter. She learns the language, gets a job, a hairdo and a skirt. Eventually she gets her own place, but there’s something missing. She’s terrified to embark on a relationship with a man, embarrassed at her sexual inexperience, having been so estranged from her own body in her masculine role, she hasn’t even learnt to pleasure herself.

The novel takes us back in time to meet Hana, a young woman from a small village in the mountains, revelling in her life as a student in the city. She loves the aunt and uncle who have raised her following the death of both her parents and they, seemingly, love each other, so that the hard edges of traditional life in the immediate aftermath of the dictatorship are softened, somewhat. While this is a society in which the men carry Kalashnikovs and the women stay in the kitchen, in the microcosm of Hana’s immediate family this doesn’t come across as overly bleak.

Then her uncle is diagnosed with cancer and, just before Hana is due to take an important exam, her aunt dies of a heart attack and she’s called home. Her loyalty to her uncle, combined with the intransigence of university bureaucracy, leads to her giving up her studies to nurse him. For his part, her uncle tries to get her married off before his demise, but Hana isn’t ready. After only just avoiding being raped by a truck driver (when cadging a lift for an essential journey in an area without public transport), Hana solemnly dons male clothing. Her uncle, his friends, and the entire region of “cursed mountains” (p146), not only accept, but approve of her new persona, which brings honour to the clan.

I found the Albanian scenes the most engaging but, unfortunately, we’re given only fleeting glances of Hana in the years she spends as Mark. The focus on her rediscovery of her femininity in America, while moving at times, dragged a little with the weight of mundane detail and dialogue and, I’m afraid, my still incomplete understanding of what it meant to be a “sworn virgin” (though I’m slightly clearer now having consulted Wikipedia) and the exact basis of Hana’s decision. Nevertheless, an intriguing concept that raises questions about the enigma of gender, and the first Albanian novel I think I’ve read.

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell is published by HarperCollins who provided my review copy. Sworn Virgin is translated from the original Italian by Clarissa Botsford and published by And Other Stories; I bought my copy from my own funds.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
12 Comments
Norah Colvin link
19/11/2015 10:04:12 am

Thanks for reviewing these two books, Anne. They both sound fascinating and I wish I could put them high on my TBR list. The issues in them, as you describe, are of interest. After reading Malala's story I am even more interested in the treatment of women in situations such as these and, as are you, am grateful to live in a place and time where, though still not ideal, the situation is much better for women. I was interested to read, in your review of "The Pearl", that while the great great grandmother had seen the removal of the veil, it has now be returned as an expectation.
The gender issue too is of interest, particularly after having read your own novel "Sugar and Snails".
I think each of these novels would provide much to contemplate.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/11/2015 10:34:02 am

Well, as you know, it's an area that fascinates me, and I'm gradually building up my expertise in "transfiction". I think our generation in the West has seen things become more liberal as time goes on, so we somehow see that as natural, but it doesn't always work out that way. And yes, so dreadful that it's still the case that, in some parts of the world, girls are deprived of an education.

Reply
Charli Mills
20/11/2015 05:42:33 am

Both sound like compelling reads. This is of interest to me more and more, as I learn what gender dysphoria is and reflect on my own childhood desire to be a boy. More so because boys were coveted and had more freedoms. I was fortunate to find a spouse who welcomed my like of ranching, fishing and trucks so I could explore such pursuits as a woman. It wasn't that I didn't identify with my gender; I just wanted to do the things I perceived the other gender could do. So many issues around this topic and I'm pleased to see authors, especially from other cultures where women often have no voice, taking on the conversation through stories.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/11/2015 10:38:24 am

Like you, Charli, I very much wanted to be a boy at various stages in childhood, for similar reasons. As you know, I've spent a lot of time contemplating gender, and still don't really understand it. I think I was lucky to come of age at a time of hairy-legged feminism which was a helpful counterbalance to the perfectly-coiffed models of femininity, so that there was a degree of choice which I think is less available to young women today.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
27/11/2015 12:01:46 am

I'm interested that you think young women now have less choice. I would have thought more. Why do you think less?

Annecdotist
27/11/2015 09:16:52 am

I do think there's more pressure on girls and young women right now to appear groomed, as the right to appear "unfeminine" seems to be a cause young feminists have left behind. But I think they have more choice in relation to careers etc . And it's perhaps going beyond the initial argument, but I'm continually shocked and saddened that so many teenage girls don't actually know that sex is supposed to be for their own pleasure.

D. Avery link
21/8/2018 01:13:22 pm

There's a little Marge Small in all of us.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/8/2018 08:06:42 am

I wondered if Marge Small was an American cultural reference or a millennial one?

D. Avery link
21/8/2018 01:12:39 pm

The Pearl reminded me of a YA novel our sixth graders read, The Bread Winner in which an Afghan girl must dress as a boy to provide for her family.
How interesting that this is common enough practice that there's a name for it and that it is acceptable in certain circumstances. That's the way though isn't it? When the system as a whole won't change, there are still go-arounds that are accepted within communities.
There's another YA book called Riding Freedom about a Charlotte who assumed a male identity and dress so that she could ride horses and drive stage coaches as Charlie. (Hee hee)
I hated the term tom-boy as a child, didn't think it necessary or kind when I only wanted to do what I wanted to do, not have my activities sorted according to gender. That never made sense to me.

Reply
Annecdotist
21/8/2018 04:22:38 pm

Thanks for coming to this old post. It’s a theme that continually fascinates me. I find it sad that gender stereotypes persist despite increased equality, at least in the West. But it’s also encouraging that there is more literature on gender crossing, especially for young people. I’m not sure what age students you teach, but The Art of Being Normal seems accessible.

Reply
D. Avery link
22/8/2018 01:46:16 am

Oh, it is old isn't it? Saw it on twitter. I will check that title out. I teach 11-12 year olds, math. But I like to read what they're reading. I used to teach all subjects to 9-10 year olds.

Annecdotist
22/8/2018 08:04:19 am

I’m really glad you picked up on it. I was doing a lot of old posts tweeting yesterday in the course of visiting reviews to compile a list of countries I visited literarily but not literally.
Oh yes, I remember the maths now from our discussions of pi. I have fond memories of my half-degree in mathematics but can’t remember what kids are up to at that age. Still too young for trigonometry?




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