In the book, Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind, the author, Suzanne Fisher Staples, develops the idea of gender and how women are valued. Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind is about a girl named Shabanu that lives with her mother, father, older sister, grandfather, aunt, and young cousins along the Pakistan border with India. Shabanu and her older sister, Phulan, are being raised to marry at a very young age. Once the girls get their first menstrual cycle, they are considered women and they are to be married sooner rather than later. Shabanu and Phulan have their fiancées chosen for them and don’t really get to know their husbands too well before they actually marry them. Shabanu’s life drastically changes when her sister’s fiancée, Hamir, is shot by his landowner, Nazir Mohammad. Phulan is rearranged to marry Shabanu’s fiancée, Murad. Shabanu becomes very frustrated because her marriage and desires are sacrificed in order for the family to keep having water supplied to them and for Nazir to let them live in peace. Shabanu decides to run away after she is told she will marry Nazir’s 50 year-old brother, Rahim-sahib.…show more content… At the start of the book, Shabanu and Phulan were being raised and ‘trained’ to be proper women in a marriage. The priority in raising them was to prepare them for a successful marriage that they would enjoy. In the middle of the book, Shabanu and Phulan are starting to get excited for their marriages. But at the end of the book, Shabanu’s excitement for her marriage is destroyed, as she is the one being sacrificed to keep the family safe. All of her dreams and things that she wants in a marriage don’t matter anymore. Her opinion and feelings were never considered. She was forced to take the back seat. Suzanne Fisher Staples develops gender and how women, their needs, and their wants are not as important as
