The Silent Soldiers: A Postcolonial Feminist Study of Selina Hossain’s <I>River of My Blood</I> and Khaled Hosseini’s <I>A Thousand Splendid Suns</I>

Abstract

This paper attempts a postcolonial feminist interpretation of Selina Hossain’s River of My Blood and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns to identify parallels between women protagonists – Boori, Mariam, Laila, Nita and Ramija – who grapple with political imbalance as well as social and sexual oppression in their respective conservative, patriarchal societies. Driven by nationalism as well as a desire for freedom, these Muslim women exhibit a passive resistance and embody the power of the socially and sexually oppressed as they traverse through pain and suffering in two war-torn countries, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The resounding force of nature and folk and oral traditions in Hossain’s rural village, Haldi, echo the imagery used in Hosseini’s depiction of the bustling cities, Kabul and Herat. The significance of how women’s cultural and social identities and their critical minds in postcolonial countries are closely identified with the linguistic traditions and folk culture of their societies is also highlighted. In accordance with the norms of postcolonial feminism, the significance of women’s immeasurable sacrifices, as portrayed in the selected words, is examined and celebrated.