My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women

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NOT SO GOOD BITS: Firstly, most of the stories are very short and, given the sheer volume, I struggled to sink my teeth into some of them. She has been reporting from Afghanistan since 1988 when she lived in Kabul and has been a frequent visitor ever since. To give a special note to the following entries that took my breath away either, my literal breath from crying or due to the unexpected gasp caused by a twist that I did not see coming and was so grateful to have read it. These stories make for deeply sobering reading and depict the options—or the lack of options—available to Afdghani women.

Yet they all encompass a central theme of resilience and love, which is more poignant now than ever.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. So no matter what atrocities and struggles are mentioned in this anthology, things are even worse now. One contributor submitted her story by taking photos of handwritten pages and sending them via WhatsApp.

This collection is essential, it is the coldest, hardest truth, and yet it rings with such hope and perseverance. There were a couple of moments where I had to stop reading just to process, which goes to show how potent some of these short stories can be. Thank you to Quercus for giving these amazing women a platform in which to showcase their creativity and their voices.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. My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird gives Afghan women the opportunity to take control of their own narrative and to use their voices to advocate for themselves and their country. Running through several stories is a sense of loneliness, how a war situation adds another dimension to endemic volatility under Taliban rule, it really affects individuals. taken together [these stories] form a remarkable portrait of lives largely invisible to readers outside Afghanistan.