Song of a Captive Bird by Jasmin Darznik

SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD by Jasmin Darznik received starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal. This debut novel definitely deserves attention and it will entertain, shock, and inform readers about the history of Iran and about the life of controversial poet Forugh Farrokhzad. Darznik herself was born in Tehran and uses Farrokhzad’s writings, films and interviews to illustrate her feminist spirit in this fictionalized account.  Farrokhzad’s loneliness and rebellious nature in the face of an oppressive society are evident throughout the book:  “‘Besooz o bezaaz’ went the timeworn injunction to brides.  Burn inwardly and accommodate.  If I told anyone my troubles, I would have been met with exactly this phrase.” Ultimately, Farrokhzad’s story is both sad and hopeful:

A day will come when your eyes

will smart at this painful song.

You’ll search for me in my words

And tell yourself: my mother,

That’s who she was.

                -from “A Poem for You”

     (Dedicated to my son, Kamyar, with hopes for the future)

Although Farrokhzad died young (just 32) in a car accident in 1967, her writing lives on and was banned in Iran for at least 10 years after the 1979 Revolution. SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD could be a very interesting book group title (publisher’s reading guide), especially given its feminist theme and many connections to other cultures and works like the poetry of Sylvia Plath and the current day Landays of Afghanistan.

Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

If you are still reeling from the twists and turns in Wein’s award-winning Code Name Verity, look for Rose under Fire, a companion novel. We meet Rose Justice, an American teenager and volunteer civilian pilot during WWII who is captured over France by the Nazis and ultimately sent to Ravensbruck, a women's concentration camp.

Told through journal entries which describe appalling conditions, this novel is darker and yet even better in some ways than Code Name Verity. Once again, Elizabeth Wein has aptly crafted a story of WWII – with flashbacks and foreshadowing. No incident that Wein shares with us is wasted … fuses and hands… aerial ramming…  the technical descriptions and images fill your mind.  

Wein’s books do take patience and slowly build to a place where the reader truly empathizes with the characters. It was difficult to think about the day to day sacrifice and hardship associated with the camps… perhaps that is why the writer carefully provides such detailed descriptions – truly pulling her readers into the place and time period.

I was struck not only by the power of this story but by the many connections it raised, especially to poetry and art.  I liked the reference to the embroidery, the paper airplanes and other efforts the prisoners made to find beauty in their circumstances … they made me think of similar efforts by other groups of prisoners (for example, see Art of Gaman about Japanese Internment at that same time period or the Return with Honor exhibit of works by Vietnam-era POWs at National Museum of the U.S. Air Force).   And Rose’s poetry and “counting-out rhymes” connected for me with the modern day Landays shared by women in Afghanistan.  If you want to develop this connection with your students, more information on that is available through Poetry magazine or the Poetry Foundation.

Yes, Rose Under Fire is dark and heavy in telling of the “Rabbits,” Polish political prisoners who were victims of medical experiments.  Yet, Wein wants Rose and us to soar, to TELL THE  WORLD, much like Rabbi Joachim Prinz did 50 years ago at the March on Washington when he said, “the most tragic problem is silence.”