This month, we are reading together.

The underground girls of Kabul

Jenny Nordberg · Kabul, Afghanistan. · 502 pages

The Underground Girls of Kabul examines bacha posh the Afghan tradition of raising daughters as sons when a family has no male heir. Journalist Jenny Nordberg spent years reporting on this hidden practice, interviewing families across Afghan society, from rural households to Kabul’s political elite. The book follows several central figures: a young girl currently living as a boy so her family can avoid social shame; a teenager forced back into womanhood at puberty and struggling with the transition; and Azita, a member of Afghan parliament who was raised as a boy herself and later disguises her own daughter the same way showing how the practice persists even among educated, progressive families. Nordberg unpacks the practical logic behind it sons can work, escort female relatives in public, and bring status to a family without one while also tracing the deeper cost: girls who’ve tasted the freedom of moving through the world as boys, only to be pulled back into restriction, often carry lasting confusion about identity, gender, and where they belong. At its core, the book is less about disguise and more about what a society is willing to bend briefly, secretly before snapping back to enforcing the roles it insists on for women.

"Being a son, even briefly, taught her exactly what being a daughter had cost her."

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