Hello!

Newspapers aren't just for relaying raw facts about the biggest current events. Rather, they can be used as media to tell stories of people and cultures that audiences may not know much about. I love journalism. I love to write, but more importantly at this stage in my life, I love reading good journalism. Since news is so all-inclusive, it's natural to make connections between what we talk about in my Glenbrook Academy English class and what is happening in the world.

As a senior in high school, I do my best to write good stories for our school's newspaper. I'm devoted to The Torch. And there's no better way for me to become a better writer than by reading the newspaper, and reading it often. The purpose of this blog is to give me an opportunity to carefully look at selected news stories, ideally making connections to our English curriculum.

I'm no critic, but I know when I like a story. My experience in journalism allows me to pick out elements of a story that make it good, and also to highlight what a particular story could be missing.

Recently in English, we've been looking at Genesis. In class, we've made note of the sexism that appears.

'This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.' (Genesis 2:23)

To the woman He said:

'I will greatly multiply
your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.' (Genesis 3:16)

Such passages illustrate the patriarchy set up in the Bible (and the Torah and the Qur'an, for that matter). Islamic patriarchy brings me to a news story I read recently in the New York Times.

This story was truly shocking to me. While I knew about the female obligation to wear the burqa, I didn't realize how truly discriminated against women are in everyday life in Afghanistan, and probably other Muslim countries as well. Little girls are forfeiting a huge part of their identity--their gender--because their society, and even their families, are so ashamed of them. While in America we can say, for the most part, that much gender discrimination has ceased, clearly the situation in Afghanistan is very different. The article highlights a part of Afghanistan that most readers were probably completely ignorant about before reading.

The writer Jenny Nordberg does a superb job painting a picture of what life is like for these gender-confused children and young adults. However, a little more background may have been helpful. As a reader who knows a little bit about the strictness of Islam, I was somewhat confused about the origin of the society's discrimination against women. The article says that wealth and a family name is passed down through sons, but that doesn't fully explain why outsiders frown down upon little girls in general. It may have been helpful to have the perspective of an Afghan man (or woman, for that matter) who is convinced of the inferiority of women. While I was fully able to get the impression that women are valued far, far less than men, it would have been nice to have a clearer idea of why.

That said, Nordberg's story is excellent. She doesn't make the Afghan people seem like freaks; rather, she successfully illustrates many of the differences in their culture that can help explain why girls are living as boys.

It is a commonly held belief among less educated Afghans that the mother can determine the sex of her unborn child, so she is blamed if she gives birth to a daughter. Several Afghan doctors and health care workers from around the country said that they had witnessed the despair of women when they gave birth to daughters, and that the pressure to produce a son fueled the practice.

In just these two sentences, Nordberg powerfully demonstrates how very different life in Afghanistan is from life in America. She also picks up on small things that make the article stronger.

“He is very naughty,” Mrs. Rafaat said in English with a sigh, of Mehran, mixing up the gender-specific pronoun, which does not exist in Dari. “My daughter adopted all the boys’ traits very soon. You’ve seen her — the attitude, the talking — she has nothing of a girl in her.”

Rather than using a bracketed "She" in the place of "he", Nordberg seizes on the cultural difference to add to her story and greatly strengthen the point of the article.

This article proves that news doesn't have to be boring. It's about telling stories, just as Nordberg has done so well.