Although extensive literature exists on the violence of war, little attention has been given to the ways in which this violence becomes entrenched and normalized in the inner recesses of everyday life. In Afghanistan Remembers, Parin Dossa examines Afghan women’s recall of violence through memories and food practices in their homeland and its diaspora. Her work reveals how the suffering and trauma of violence has been rendered socially invisible following decades of life in a war-zone.

Dossa argues that it is necessary to acknowledge the impact of violence on the familial lives of Afghan women along with their attempts at recovery under difficult circumstances. Informed by Dossa’s own story of family migration and loss, Afghanistan Remembers is a poignant ethnographic account of the trauma of war. She calls on the reader to recognize and bear witness to the impact of deeper forms of violence.

Parin Dossa is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia. She is the co-producer of two videos, New Voices: Ethnic Elders in Canada and Out of the Shadows: Narratives of Women with Development Disabilities, and has written extensively on migration, gender, and health.

Parin Dossa's profile page

“Dossa’s approach is to look at the memory of violence among women in Afghanistan and in Canada, which demonstrates how the act of remembering and sharing history can empower women and reshape and re-appropriate global narratives about conflict. Less a study of civic groups and more a reflection on the women who inhabit them, her text demonstrates some of the ways disenfranchised individuals can use everyday practices around things like food to resist the relentless oppression of the memory of violence.”

<em>PoLAR Online</em>