The work I chose to examine is “A Thousand Splendid Suns’ ‘ by Khaled Hosseini, and focuses on the time period in Afghanistan in which the Afghani war against the Soviets breaks out in the 1960s. One of the main characters of this novel is an Afghani woman, Mariam, and readers get to see her life unfold from being a young girl in a war-free Afghanistan to becoming a woman during the breakout of war. Readers see many instances of injustice of power differences between women and men once the war breaks out, and how these women are not able to do much to free themselves due to lack of resources, advocacy, education, and overall respect in society. Some examples of this injustice between the genders of men and women can be seen when Mariam, who comes from a poorer family who does not truly care for her, is forced to marry a shoemaker, Rasheed, once her mother dies because the family doesn’t want to spend resources on Mariam’s well-being; in this society, it’s permissible to “hand over” women to marriage because this is their ultimate destiny. Once in this marriage, Mariam is treated decently by Rasheed until she experiences numerous miscarriages; one of the overarching purposes of a wife in this type of society is to give husbands a son, and if a wife cannot fulfill this duty then there is no purpose for the husband to spend resources to take care of the wife; it’d be better for him to remarry. One part of their story that stuck out to me is when Mariam makes dinner for Rasheed, and Rasheed notices some pieces of rice are too hard – this has apparently occurred before and Rasheed becomes very upset by this. Rasheed proceeds to gather small pebbles from outdoors and forces Mariam to eat them, consequentially breaking her teeth. This is another example of how men have such power over women as to forcing them to eat rocks and permanently break teeth due to a minor inconvenience of their daily life (in this case, Rasheed’s dinner being ruined). Overall, this work depicts a society in which there is a huge power gap between men and women due to this society experiencing the negative impacts of war, and the notion of women embodying the traits of the “Other” in society is pronounced in this novel.
Author: hussain.145
Yo, Is This Racist?
Looking Into the Gender Pay Gap
By Dena Hussain
One type of systemic injustice involves occupation and the pay gap between men and women. It is an empirical fact that men make more money than women for the same jobs, but there are varying reasons for this gap. Some people say that it is women who choose to work is lower-paying/skilled jobs, or choose lower-paying specializations, or it is that women who make up the majority of a job are paid less because they are women (this is outright discrimination). However, the differing choices in type of occupation by women cannot alone explain the gender pay gap; for women who are making advances in, say, a company, they often reach a level that they cannot get past – this concept is known as the “Glass Ceiling”. We usually see the Glass Ceiling in setting where a woman makes it to some sort of managerial position, and when she tries to make it to the next position beyond that, there is something systemic in her way that prevents this from happening; this can be societal and in how women are raised. Oftentimes, women who make it to the top were taught at a young age to “act like a man” – in taking risks, creating beneficial alliances that will help progress one to the next level, choose advanced occupations and/or specializations, etc. Furthermore, when looking at professions that are mainly dominated by women, it can be seen empirically that wages in these jobs are decreasing; this is systematic because originally, these jobs were higher-paid when they were occupied mainly by men – this includes real estate, lawyers, etc. So, the wage gap between gender cannot solely be explained by the fact that some women just simply choose lower-paying and less-skilled occupations and specialties because when looking at women who are not in these positions, or try to climb up the company ladder, they are paid less or prevented from advancements. In conclusion, when looking at any injustice, it is important to keep in mind a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. ; “an injustice to one is an injustice to all”.
Joyce J Chen, Daniel Crown, The Gender Pay Gap in Academia: Evidence from the Ohio State University, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Volume 101, Issue 5, October 2019, Pages 1337–1352, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajae/aaz017
The Importance of Toni Morrison’s Works
Toni Morrison was an African American female author born in Wofford, Ohio, in 1931 (The Most Influential American Author”, 2019). Throughout her lifetime, she wrote multiple novels that gained large popularity – mainly due to the fact that not many authors during the 20th century wrote considering the perspective of the black female. Her novels exposed the overall experience of an African American individual living in America during slavery and post-slavery; this perspective helped many Americans gain insight on a topic that has otherwise been invisible to the majority (The Most Influential American Author”, 2019).
There are many famous works of American literature that have centralized on the topic of racism and discrimination (such as To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee), however, most of these novels draw from the perspective of a white man. To add, it is usually the white man who contributes to “solving” racism. This is where the influence and impact Toni Morisson’s works have on our American literature society – having the person whose struggle is the central topic of a work have their perspective shown gives readers a much more three-dimensional understanding of the problem being written about.
Reading a work of Morrsion’s, such as her short story “Recitatif”, can help to convey this idea better. Readers can see that the two main characters in the story – Twyla and Roberta – are of different races (perhaps white and black), because at a point in the story, Twyla expresses her discomfort of rooming with “a girl of a whole other race” in her new orphanage. Additionally, Twyla is seen as being “different” from the other girls at the orphanage because she was “dumped” – not because her parents passed away. These differences between Twyla and the other girls helps to point out how different races are treated differently and have different experiences.
Having such a unique set of work compared to other authors during her time, and having her be of the same race as the character’s whose perspectives she writes from, makes Toni Morrison’s works of literature stand out. Her works have shed light upon the perspective of being an African American female in America; this brings about important effects of opening up the conversation that racism is still deeply rooted in our system and that it is not right to be bystanders of such an issue in America.
Margalit Fox. (August 6, 2019). Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html
The most influential American author of her generation, Toni Morrison’s writing was racially ambiguous. (August 7, 2019). Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/the-most-influential-american-author-of-her-generation-toni-morrisons-writing-was-radically-ambiguous-121557