My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird - Edited by Lyse Doucet - ★★★.¾

EDITOR: Lyse Doucet

GENRE: OwnVoices Anthology.

RATING: 3.85 stars.

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.