The Breadwinner

Ellis’s story explores the brutality of the Taliban regime, which dehumanizes and represses the female characters. Parvana’s mother is university-educated and worked as a successful writer for a radio station in the years before the story takes place. She is devastated at being forbidden to work or leave home freely after the Taliban take control of Kabul. Similarly, Nooria and Parvana are forbidden to attend school. Women are required to cover themselves with a burqa when they leave home. Even inside their homes, they cannot be visible to outsiders; women must have their windows blacked out to keep them from being seen by anyone in the outside world. Parvana’s mother’s immense frustration at her erasure from public life is evident in her fury at her daughters’ suggestion that a note from their father be forged to excuse her for being outside without a male escort; “I will not walk around my own city with a note pinned to my burqa as if I were a kindergarten child. I have a university degree!” (38).

The Taliban bans women from acting independently in the public sphere, but the organization is also responsible for the deaths and arrests of countless Afghan men.