Songs of Love and War

by Afghan Women's Writing Project

Afghan women writing against conditions of silence.

$15 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.

The Afghan Women's Writing Project worked with women inside Afghanistan and in the diaspora to collect poems and stories — some written under extraordinary personal risk. This anthology is the result. Not a single narrator. Not a single perspective. Dozens of voices, ranging from grief to humor to fury to love, all insisting on the same thing: we are here, we are thinking, we have something to say. The most direct dispatch on this shelf.

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The Swallows of Kabul(2019)

dir. Zabou Breitman & Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec

Love and hope, under Taliban rule.

In Taliban-ruled Kabul, 1998, two couples' lives collide after a young husband's reckless act of defiance sets off a chain of events neither family can escape. Adapted from Yasmina Khadra's novel, in delicate watercolor animation.

Why it’s here: Punk in its watercolor tenderness refusing to let brutality have the only voice — these are people living full inner lives under an occupation designed to erase them. Pedagogical in showing how authoritarian control over daily life — dress, music, movement — is the mechanism of the regime, not incidental to it.

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For the family bookshelf

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