Beneath+My+Mother's+Feet

This book is about a girl named Nazia. Her father is injured at his construction site job and their family is becoming desperate for money. They think they have things figured out, but their eldest son steals Nazia's dowry. Now Nazia has little hope of being married. When things couldn't get any worse, her mother comes and pulls her out of school to help her work as a masi (maid). This is a very shameful job. When they get enough money to pay their rent, it gets lost and their father disappears. In this story, a series of things continue to go wrong for Nazia, but she is never allowed to choose her own path, it is always what her mother and father do that set up her life. Nazia is getting tired of paying for their mistakes. In the end, Nazia has to decide for herself what she wants to do with her life.

In this book, I learned that the culture in Pakistan is actually very similar to Indian culture. They wear similar clothes, eat similar foods, and even have similar markets and jobs. The tradition for marriage is that the parents arrange it and the daughter must have a large and valuable dowry (money given to the groom's family in exchange for marriage) to be wed. In this culture, a girl is worth nothing if not married and there are many ways to be shamed. What is the worst part is that this kind of thing is going on in present day Pakistan. ~Anika

I didn't think that I would like this book very much, but once I got it started it was very good. The only thing I didn't like was all of the Pakistan words th at I needed to check the glossary in the back for. They have a very different culture there so it was kind of hard to relate to. I guess almost all multi-cultural books are like that in some way though. I would recommend this book to anyone that enjoys the Indian culture. ~Anika

I learned quite a bit about the Pakistan culture from this book. All of the people wear traditional clothing. Men's clothes are called a kurta, women's clothes are called a kameeze, along with a dupatta and a hijab for their head. Their clothing covers a lot more of their body than our unmodest clothes do here in America. Also, they eat different foods than we do-like rice (similar to many of the Middle Eastern countries.) But probably the main thing from this book that kind of surprised me was how incredibly planned out the futures of the girls there are. Nazia didn't really have any choices (until the end). Mainly, their entire lives are planned out for them since they minute they were born. Their parents have control over everything in their lives. ~Hayley Elizabeth(:

And I WAS going actually recommend this book. I was going to recommend it to Anika-and then I opened up the Wiki and saw that she had already read it. So, I don't want to recommend it to anyone else. It was OK. Not much happened, and there was really no romance or anything interesting in it, other than learning about the culture. And if it weren't for this unit, I probably never would have read it. ~Hayley Elizabeth(: