The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan

Thank you Library Thing for your Early Reviewers copy of this book. It was quite interesting and very well written. In her book author Jenny Nordberg describes the Afghan practice of families without male children allowing a daughter to pose as a boy. This saves face for the family since male

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children are far more highly prized than girls. The practice is known as bacha posh. Now imagine the girl living as a boy for years only to be told around the age of 12 or 13 she must revert to being a girl, because that is when her true value emerges as a potential wife. Nordberg writes of several women who have gone through this metamorphosis and speak well of the opportunities presented to them as "males" and the difficulties brought about by the change back to being female. Ms. Nordberg writes with distinction and understanding of the culture of Afghanistan without prejudice of native customs which makes this study exceptional. The book gave me a view of a country slowly changing yet clinging to the past because of fear of the future.

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Nordberg undoubtedly possesses one of the most important attributes an investigative reporter needs to effectively record and advocate for social change, she can make distant readers actually feel they are experiencing the weight of oppression, fear, and injustice solely through the power of her

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detailed written accounts. An important read that will have you pulling at your hijab even if you've never owned one. Definitely recommend.

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This is a remarkable book. It claims to be about the Bascha Posh phenomenon in Afghanistan, where young girls pass as boys until they hit puberty, at which point they are unceremoniously converted back into girls so they can immediately prepare for marriage and child rearing. Yet the book is

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actually about so much more: the general way of life for Afghan women. It was really hard to read this book and not be at once horrified for these women and grateful to have been born here instead of there. The women featured in this book are courageous and remarkable. Fantastic read.

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This is a hard book to read. Between the subject matter and Nordberg's intense writing, this book grabs you in the gut. It's a well know fact that women in Afghanistan on treated horribly. Anyone with 1/4 a brain has heard or read something about that. Nordberg manages to suss out a new angle on

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this well-documented subject - namely - women who get to live as men, even for a while. She explored this topic with clarity and gave her readers access to a raw and intense narrative. What these women suffer - it's unthinkable for us in the Western World. This book will have a treasured place in my collection of works on Afghanistan and Women. I highly recommend this to anyone who wished to know more about this subject. An excellent read.

I received this book free from the LibraryThing Early Review's Program in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

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The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Norberg is an excellent piece of investigative journalism. Ms. Nordberg based her book on interviews. She became aware of the not much talked about custom of girls dressing as boys. This is a country where men have all

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the privileges and rights, women are nothing.

Women very rarely divorce their husbands because the children are the husband’s “property”. Why does this happen? After reading this book, you can only conclude that this is the only way that women can work within the culture. Sometimes they are forced to become boys via dress and short hair in order to support their family. Women can only go outside to the market if they have a male escort. If they don’t have any males in their family, then a girl is asked to be a bocha posh, sort of like a third sex. I remember someone in my college class in California could only come on a tour of a Buddhist temple with the rest of the class if she had a male escort. Her father, and three of her brothers came with her. Back in Afghanistan, what are you to do if there are only females in your family?

The author talked to several bocha posh. They had different reactions to being asked, some had volunteered. Just before puberty, many of them changed back into girls but some did not want to go back after they had experienced freedom. You can’t just go into a completely different culture and change things like gender roles or the value of women. You need to have insight and this author provides it. She has learned much about the Afghan current culture and the past. She brings up one important requirement that would be necessary for the country to change in regards to women. This country has only a 10% literary rate and many live in deep poverty. The author took a lot of risks to provide this report, she averaged about two death threats a week while she was in Afghanistan.

I highly recommend this book for those who want to have a deeper understand women’s situation in Afghanistan. You can’t rush in and make changes, you have to have insight and learn how the society works and doesn’t work.

I received this Advance Reading Copy as a win from FirstReads but that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in this review.

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Unforgettable, and please remind me of this book if I ever complain about anything ever again. This is an in depth look at the utter misery of everyone's lives in Afghanistan, with the focus where it should be, on women. The tribal systems, predating Islam, treat women solely as wombs for

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germinating boys. The gossip mongers, so prevalent in a society where nothing else functions, serve to ruin the lives of anyone who acts "immoral". Married teenaged women are killed or replaced by additional wives for not bearing sons. And so, the remedy for those families is to turn one of their girls into a boy until they reach puberty, by dressing her in pants, cutting her hair, and making her work. This turns out to be the best for these children because of the freedom (albeit limited) entailed. But how can you keep them down as women when they've been exaltedly privileged as males? And what happens when you force them to change back? The author spends time with the "bacha posh" (literally "dressed as a boy") and their families to learn the ramifications.

I recently spent time with Regina Calcaterra, author of Etched In Sand, a memoir of a childhood of violence and neglect. She said that she had developed an appreciation for being a foster child here in the US as compared to other countries. Afghanistan, from this book, has to be the worst place in the world to try and survive. Between wars, invasions, grinding poverty, rugged terrain, and especially the subjugation of women, suicide seems like a viable option.

I am not a fan of "poverty porn". I try to keep learning, and this book forced my eyes to be opened to my charmed life as a woman of the first world. I am now changed and a bit humbled. There but for fortune/Go you and I.

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Swedish journalist Jenny Nordbend was waiting to interview a female member of Afghan's Parliament whom she calls Azita.

She was sitting in Azita's parlor being entertained by Azita's daughters when one had a surprising confidence - “My brother is a girl”, the little girl said.

So begins

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Nordbend's foray into the Afghan practice bacha posh (dressed up like a boy).

Nordbend found the practice not as rare as Westerners might guess. Many Afghanis admitted to knowing one of these girls, if not directly than as 'my cousin's cousin' or 'a girl in the next village' way. As to why this practice is not more recognized in the west – as Azita says Westerners, especially aid societies for Afghan women, are often better at instructing than listening.

These girls whose families choose to dress them as boys do so for many reasons. All of them reflect the realities of living in a culture where boys are valued and girls are not. First off, women need a male escort to travel outside their homes. Again. this is much easier if one has a son in the family.

In Azita's case, if she had not had a son, running for political office would have been much more difficult for her. She would have been judged by many as having deserted her duty by giving up childbearing before a son was produced. The other alternative to having one of her daughters dress as a son would to have been to let her husband take another wife (in his case a third) to produce a male heir.

Some believe that dressing a daughter as a son is a sort of magic – that being in the constant presence of a boy child means that the next child will also be male. Nordbend believes that there is evidence that this practice is very old and dates to the pre-Islamic era.

Another somewhat magical belief is that i a woman can willfully determine the sex of her child, so that abearing a female child is seen as an act of defiance.

And then there are the families that would like their daughter to have an education and see this as the only way to achieve this.

For any and all of the reasons, these girls take on all the characteristics, mannerisms and bravado of a boy. They are accepted in society as boys until shortly before puberty; at that time a son may instantly turn back into a daughter. This process is relatively easy as Afghanistan does not issue birth certificates. The local mullah (holy man) often proclaims the birth and sex of a newborn. Obviously, then the mullahs may be in complicity when a girl becomes bacha posh at birth.

Although most bacha posh marry, (the only path open to Afghani girls) a few refuse and become 'honorary uncles' living with the women of a household, but dressing and acting as men throughout their lifetimes.

Muslim fundamentalists, however, forbid the practice and it was treated harshly under the rule of the Taliban. The acclaimed Afghani movie Osama tells the bleak story of one girl who attempted this under Taliban rule.

This was an incredibly intriguing look at gender roles from a very different, non-Western point of view. I came away from this book with a much greater understanding of life in a conservative Muslim nation, as well as sadness for the necessities of bacha posh.

Highly recommended.

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I so much enjoyed this book - it was a window into a culture I know little about, and the type of book I don't usually read - non-fiction, but not a memoir. I say not a memoir, and yet it was so much more enjoyable than a dry non-fiction book because Nordberg put herself in there, instead of just

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reporting. It was very personal, yet objective and well-researched, all at the same time.

So interesting how much she was able to find out, after being rebuffed in the beginning ("No, there are no women living as men in Afghanistan").

At first I thought I didn't care for her digressions into women as men in other countries, history, and other religions, but came to see that this put the book in context; gave it perspective.

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This was a fascinating book about women in Afghanistan, focused on exploring the practice of raising girls dressed as boys. The primary focus is on this tradition in Afghanistan, where they are known as "bacha posh," but the book also reviews similar practices in other countries, and the possible

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historical commonalities between them. Much like Jason DeParle's "American Dream," this is non-fiction that reads like fiction in terms of drawing you in to the stories of the main characters the author interviewed, and interweaving those stories in the appropriate academic context and analysis. While I had little prior knowledge of Afghanistan beyond the news reports of the past decade, I found this a very interesting and worthwhile read that was hard to put down. Thanks for the Early Reviewers copy!

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This is a fascinating look into an interesting subculture in Afghanistan. There exist a number of girls who, for a variety of reasons, live as boys -- dress as boys, go by male names, play with the boys, etc. Jenny Nordberg has become the greatest expert on these people simply because she's the

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only person who knows anything about them. For her book she met with a number of these girls and interviewed them and their families. She records not only the results of her research but the sort of experiences she herself had traveling around Afghanistan to meet these families.

This book was fascinating. I would recommend it particularly for anyone interested in Afghanistan and/or women's studies.

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In Afghanistan, the culture is ruled almost entirely by men, and women have very few rights. A birth of a son is celebrated, while a daughter is mourned; a family without sons is seen as "weak" and on a lower level of society. In this book, journalist Jenny Nordberg tells the true stories of a

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third kind of child, a "bacha posh"; a girl temporarily raised and presented as a boy to the outside world. This way, before they are married, they can enjoy, at least for a short time, freedoms that boys have but girls do not. Sometimes it is done because a family needs the girl to work to bring in extra income for the family, but since women are not allowed to hold jobs, the girls must be disguised as boys do so.

This book follows the stories of a few girls and young women living as bacha posh; Azita is the mother of 4 girls and works in the parliament, and who sees no other choice than turn her youngest daughter into a boy. Zhara is a tomboy teenager who struggles with puberty and rebels against her parents attempts to turn her back into a girl. Shukria is a married mother of 3 who lived for 20 years as a man, and two other young women, Nader and Shahed who choose to remain in male disguise as adults.

It was heartbreaking to read of the violence against women in this country, and the struggles of all the women and girls for such things as the right to an education and to be safe from domestic violence. It was also heart rendering to read of the girls raised as boys who had no choice in the matter, and then were expected to simply give up all the freedoms they enjoyed living as males to marry and have children, in marriages arranged by the parents. It really makes me appreciate the fact that I live in a country where I can come and go as I please, dress I please, and choose whether I want to marry (and to who) or not.

I won a free paperback copy of this book from Goodreads. It will not be on sale to the public until September 16th. I consider it to be an honor and a privilege to be among the first to read this wonderfully written book.

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I found this book interesting, but emotionally hard for me to digest. It took me longer to read than the average book because it felt "heavy on my mind." Coincidentally, this is my first year teaching at an international baccalaureate school and our first unit was on values and beliefs. I happened

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to be reading this at the same time the kids were reading Andrew Clement's Extra Credit which is partially set in Afghanistan. That made for some interesting connections and discussions based on the practices described in this book. It certainly helped me to understand a side of this culture I previously didn't know existed, and led to some inquiry questions for the students and I.

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Nordberg has written a fascinating book focused on a strange practice prevalent in Afghanistan called bacha posh. Afghanistan is an intensely patriarchical society where families with girls feel the need to have one of them masquerade as a boy during their preadolescent years. Nordberg does a

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wonderful job of explaining the multiple issues surrounding this strange practice, using several young women to illustrate its complexity. Likewise, she explores the flip side: mada posht: “He whose women will only deliver girls.” This represents the shame felt by all families who do not produce a male progeny. Grim statistics clearly illustrate the unfortunate consequence of this obsession: 18,000 Afghan women die of childbirth each year (i.e. ~ 50/day or one every half hour). Life expectancy for Afghan women is 44 and most spend their short lives pregnant and in a desperate quest for a boy child. Marriages are arranged for political and economic reasons and often trap the woman-frequently just girls—in homes where they are often abused—and where divorce is not a viable option.

Although not recognized in the Afghan culture, the practice of bacha posh seems widely tolerated as a method of coping with the lack of a male heir. Most of the bacha posh girls revert at puberty, but some refuse and can experience problems as a result. Is this practice good, bad or neutral for the girls? Nordberg attempts to show the ramifications of the various outcomes—some are clearly bad but others seem to be more beneficent. Of the women who elect to remain posing as males, most do it because of the freedom they feel in this intensely male dominated society.

One of the more interesting insights Nordberg has is to emphasize that this problem is not isolated just to Afghanistan. Instead it exists throughout the world and, to a subtle extent, even in the first world where men decide women’s health issues and powerful females are often viewed negatively.

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The United Nations calls Afghanistan the most dangerous country on Earth to be a woman. This book presents, through compelling individual portraits, a fascinating, revealing look at the bacha posh, the rejection of and resistance to the extreme oppressive patriarchy in this country. Remarkable and

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powerful.

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This overwhelming book is about women in the Afghanistan viewed through the lens of daughters who are raised as sons, because only sons matter. Whether the country was under the communist rule of Russia or the democratic one of the US didn't seem to matter. Both were good for women because there

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was a system of laws in place. It's the lawlessness of tribal conflict that leads to the total suppression of the women, so there's not much good to look for there in the coming years. Nordberg refers often to Sex and World Peace by Valerie M. Hudson to examine how the treatment of women effects politics around the world. She states that the way women in a country are treated determines how violent and warlike a country is with more oppression leading to more over all violence. I had a lovely coupon to get any e-book from Barnes and Nobel for $6.99, so I snapped that one right up too.

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Author Jenny Nordberg began to hear hints of something hidden in Afghanistan. Hidden within a culture that values men over women, and the birth of a baby boy is something to celebrate while the birth of a baby girl can lead to shame and public ridicule, there is a hidden tradition carried out by

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some families, whereby young girls are raised as boys. These girls are referred to as bacha posh.

There are different motivations for having a daughter live as a bacha posh. Some do it in order to improve their reputation and standing after having only daughters, while others do it for the convenience of having a "son" to assist with things like running errands and escorting the other daughters in the family (in a society that forbids women and young girls to go out unsupervised without a male present). And yet others do it for the benefit of the girl, in order to allow her to have the experience and confidence that comes with living as a boy. They are entitled to sit with their father and his friends, to work, to play in the street. There are special benefits allowed young boys that girl's are not permitted.

There have been attempts in the past to change the culture surrounding the subjugation of women. The royal couple Amanollah Khan and his queen Soraya in the '20s fought for women's rights, pushing for their education and banning their sale into marriage. However amid a backlash and the threat of a coup, Amanollah Khan had to abdicate in 1929.

Here in America we tend to oversimplify this issue. We think Afghanistan simply needs to change their culture of making women second-class citizens who live at the whim of the men in their lives. However we don't understand the complexity of the issue, in a society that views the years before puberty of both men and women as simply "preparation for procreation". Their economy is essentially based heavily on the ability to sell daughters into marriage and to form tribal alliances.

At one point, the author asks people about the differences between men and women. Men give a list of varied responses, such as women are more "sensitive" or more "emotional". But the majority of the women give the same answer: freedom.

Which led me to think: In the West, we focus on things like women being forced to cover their heads. However it is so much simpler than that. The women would happily cover their heads as an expression of their faith, if only they could have freedom: the freedom to choose to leave the house, to travel, to go to school, to choose whether or not to marry and whom to marry, whether or not to have children. This is why every Afghan woman wishes she were a man. Men have freedom; women do not.

My final word: I absolutely loved this book! It made me realize how complicated this issue is. You can't just say, "Women should be treated equally..." and expect that is it. This is a cultural issue that has developed over thousands of years, and has economical implications as well as many other things. It is something that needs to be slowly changed, and it is something that needs to be changed from within the Afghan people and culture, and not from the outside from the West. The author uses the stories of multiple girls who have lived as bacha posh to illustrate the benefits and downfall of this practice. The book was well done, although the transition between subjects was sometimes difficult to follow, and you'd have to try and figure out who was being written about now.

And while Afghanistan is a hard world for a woman to exist, it isn't much better for the men of Afghanistan.

This was an unquestionably fascinating read, and a favorite of 2014!

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This is not a good book. But it is a necessary book. The world needs to know the extent to which women and girls are enslaved and dominated. We need to know that the birth of a daughter is cause for mourning, so much so that families without sons at times will sometimes dress a daughter as a boy

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and the community "accepts" that child as a cherished son. We need to know how these [i]bacha posh[/I] enjoy freedom, privileges and esteem from their families and are one day ordered to become daughters. They must revert to being second class citizens and give up all they've enjoyed. Some go willingly, some reluctantly, some not at all.

The stories were heartbreaking. They were enraging. They were horrifying. And there seems to be no end in sight for their plights.

This is not a good book. Everyone should read it.

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I really liked this book, enjoyed reading about woman in Afghanistan. And being happy living in USA.
Jenny Nordberg visited a lot of different woman and I am Shure that was dangerous and not easy. I did not know about the girls dressing up as boys, and I found this book a very important piece of

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coping with tabus in a society. You don't have to go as far as Afghanistan to find this.

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A Goodreads Giveaway. Thank You!
A great read about girls living as boys ("bacha posh" - how girls grow up disguised as boys in gender-segregated Afghanistan) in an Afghan society that demands a family is “better” or “a higher status” with boys. This book describes the demands on women to

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produce male offspring and that women in the Afghan society are there simply to give birth. Girls are used as chattel and often wed as soon as they reach puberty.
This book follows a number of bacha posh of different ages. The Underground Girls of Kabul reads like a story and you will be invested in the women/girls’ lives. I hope this author writes a follow-up in a few years. I would love to know what happens to the women and girls she has interviewed in this book.

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In a culture where the birth of a son is cause for celebration and the birth of a daughter results in despair, some families choose to raise a daughter as a boy. Nordberg shares the stories of some of these girls and women, known as bacha posh.

This book is not an easy read, because the stories are

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disturbing. When Nordberg sticks to the stories of the featured bacha posh, the book is compelling. However, her discussions of research on gender and sexuality, Zoroastrian history, etc. distract from the narratives and result in some stories (particularly Nader's and Shahed's) being glossed over.

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Bacha posh - girls dressed as boys in Afghanistan.

This is a hugely interesting subject, particularly given that the girls dressed as boys were in Afghanistan, where the segregation between men and women is so extreme. How then, is it possible for girls to pretend to be boys for many years, enjoying

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the same freedoms that boys enjoy? How is it that people who know the families and the children involved, just go along with the charade until the parents deem that the time is right for the girl to reappear?

The reasons for this pretense are varied. In poorer communities it could be that the family has no male member to operate outside the house; no-one to shop, or escort the daughters if they need to go out. Sometimes it is due to the belief that once a male child is born, others will follow, so a female child is dressed as a boy to help this 'magic' along. In one instance in the book, the child is a daughter of a female politician who has only daughters and who is more respected now that she has a 'boy'.

Then there is the question of how the girls are affected, both in the short term and longer. Having experienced the freedoms of being a boy and running unchecked through the streets, how difficult must it be to suddenly revert to being a demure young girl who looks no-one in the eye and rarely speaks? Mostly this change occurs around or before puberty, but sometimes it can go on into adulthood.

This book answers many of these questions and raises many more, but it did struggle to hold my interest, as it was a bit dry and long-winded, particularly towards the end where the author discusses the concept in the context of other cultures and periods of history and it started to feel more like a thesis.

For readers interested in the subject presented in a novel, I suggest The Pearl that Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi (3.5 stars from me).

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The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg is a fascinating book. One of the most interesting non-fiction books I've read in years. This book is an eye opening look at the lives of the women and children of Afghanistan. I had no idea this phenomenon even existed, let alone that it was so

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widespread. Kudos to the author, a truly great read!

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A compelling and shocking book that interrogates social constructs of gender identity and opens a new chronicle in Afghan history. Women's rights are human rights, and this should not be side-stepped or debated. Nordberg is a deft writer who brings individuals and her own experiences to life.

THE UNDERGROUND GIRLS OF KABUL by Jenny Nordberg
The life of girls who dress and act like boys for the benefit of their families is detailed in this well researched book. Most of the girls – called Bacha Posh – are turned into boys because the families do not have sons. Not having a son is an

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embarrassment to the family and a failure of a wife. Because girls are kept inside the home and kept completely separate from the outside world, a family with no sons has no one to chaperone the women/girls of the family, no one to shop or run errands and no one to uphold the family’s honor. Most bacha posh turn back into girls shortly before reaching puberty, marry and have children. But some find the return to being female in a strictly regulated, patriarchal society almost impossible to endure.
The family stories are compelling reading, especially that of Azita (herself once bacha posh) who is one of the few female parliamentarians in Afghanistan. Azita is educated and had expected to become a professional before the Taliban and then the mullahs decreed a return to veiled and hidden women. Married into a village family with an illiterate husband, the transition is difficult and only bearable when she is chosen to be a Member of Parliament in the reformed Afghanistan. With 4 girls and no boys, Azita makes the decision to “save face” by turning her youngest daughter into a son. With the resurgence of strict Muslim adherence, her life and the life of her bacha posh daughter, again becomes constrained.
The final chapters of the book detail the psychological and legal repercussions of bacha posh as well as the world wide incidents of daughters being made into boys in patriarchal societies and times. These chapters drag a bit in an otherwise engrossing book.
4 of 5 stars

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