Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* In The Tenth Parallel (2010), Griswold offered keen geopolitical insight by cataloging ongoing religious strife in contentious locales, including Indonesia, Nigeria, and Sudan. Here, the globetrotting Griswold recruits renowned photographer Seamus Murphy to provide the visuals, and turns her attention to Afghanistan in order to record a collection of landays, Afghani folk poems, typically sung by women in private. With the help of local guides and Pashto translators, Griswold convinces women to share couplets that touch on a wide range of emotions and themes, from love and grief to separation and war. Because the lyrics remain anonymous over generations, Afghan women use them to express freely their desires and frustrations, yet still risk violating Taliban strictures against song and dance. From heartbreaking indictments of fathers who sell their daughters into slavery to humorous, techno-savvy posts on a Pashto Landay Facebook page, Griswold's selections illustrate the rich potential of this poetic form, at once contemporary and timeless. Murphy's stunning photographs complement the text perfectly, capturing children at play in refugee camps outside Kabul, smiling U.S. soldiers pointing squirt guns, and armed militants marching through the mountains. A timely, indispensable, and unforgettable poetic documentary.--Baez, Diego Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Landays, 22-syllable folk couplets sung anonymously by women, have long been the dominant form of social satire and gender subversion in Afghan poetry, and Griswold's translations mark a stunning handling of their complex "beauty, bawdiness, and wit." Flanked by Murphy's photographs, with their striking blend of wartime journalism and human compassion, Griswold's couplets are peppered with brief prose passages in which she delves into the cultural and historical traditions that inform the humor and gravity of her translations. Among her many accomplishments is elucidating the "fury at the presence of the U.S. military and rage at occupation" while also detailing the fears surrounding the end of American occupation, including a return to lives of isolation and oppression for Afghan women. "My lover is fair as an American solider can be," begins one couplet. "To him I looked dark as a Talib, so he martyred me." In Griswold's version of this 19th-century landay, the Pashto word Angrez (English) is no longer translated as "British soldier," pointing with stark irony to the landscape of contemporary military occupation, and signaling a collection that may indeed be remembered as a groundbreaking work of translation and poetic journalism. Photos. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The landay is a two-line folk poem invented and shared by Afghan women, an old form still very much alive. These present-day landays offer a peephole into the society of those who have taken great risks to write them. While poetry writing is now permitted in Kabul (it was banned previously by the Taliban), it is still frowned upon in rural areas; authors often refuse credit for their work. Love, oppression, war, and politics are the prime topics. Along with Seamus Murphy's photographs, translator Griswold's commentary decodes the messages, which are not always this clear: "Darling, come down to the river/ I've baked you bread and hidden it in my pitcher." Griswold recounts her difficulties collecting the landays and relates a horrific story of one suicide. Less grim is the fascinating mix of old and new: "Daughter, in America the river isn't wet./ Young girls learn to fill their jugs on the Internet." VERDICT Following up on a New York Times Magazine article ("Why Afghan Women Risk Death To Write Poetry"), Griswold and Murphy, along with their heroic Afghani interpreter, Asma Safi, have documented an artistic movement that is at once delightful and courageous. [See "What's Coming for National Poetry Month in April?" Prepub Alert, 11/18/13.]-Ellen Kaufman, New York (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
