Fabric Matters: Feminist Dialogue and Muslim Veiling

Abstract

This article postulates that Deborah Ellis' The Breadwinner (2000) offers a feminist intervention into global social justice by building solidarity between North American and Afghan women resisting gendered oppression. The Breadwinner, written for young adult audiences, is frequently employed in North American multicultural curricula. Drawing on anthropological research, I argue that Ellis' imperfect and sometimes contradictory representations of the burqa and the chador initiate a dialogue about religious and cultural practices that models non-paternalistic feminist intervention into global women's oppression. Ellis' engagement with Afghan women's struggles avoids the two extremes—silence and paternalism—often present in western feminist reactions to global social justice issues. In analyzing the novel's representations of Muslim veiling practices, I demonstrate that Ellis productively grapples with her own western feminist presumptions in order to respectfully portray Afghan women as agential rather than implying that they need western women to save them. As such, The Breadwinner is a fruitful site for pedagogical and feminist discussions about global activism. Ultimately, I argue that feminism-in-action requires repeated attempts to understand global counterparts as a necessary impetus for political and social change.