Afghanistan Remembers

"Afghanistan Remembers makes an important contribution to the literature on memory and memorialization, the gender relations of war, immigration and diaspora studies, and the political economy and anthropology of food. The detailed, richly layered telling of the women's stories is exceptional, as is Dossa's analysis of them." -- Wenona Giles, Department of Anthropology, York University "Afghanistan Remembers is engaged anthropology at its best: innovative, responsive, nuanced. This compelling ethnography explores the ways gendered violences of war and dislocation resonate across families in Afghanistan to resettlements in Canada - impacting the inner spaces of people's everyday lives as not-quite-articulated knowledge. But these memories also convey political truths and illuminate injustices - revealing the unknown workings of violence. Through these women's narratives and culinary lives, Dossa shows how stories and 'food as performance' can reveal, and begin to heal, the impact of violence on the inner recesses of life." -- Carolyn R. Nordstrom, Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

In Afghanistan Remembers, Parin Dossa examines how violence is remembered by Afghan women through memories and food practices in their homeland and its diaspora.

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.