Amal Unbound
Author: Aisha Saeed
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Illustrator: ---
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Date: 2018
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About the book:
When Amal finds herself in a situation where she was standing up for herself, she ended up losing everything. This story takes place in modern day Pakistan. Amal is fighting for women's rights and unequal power in society today. With her goal of teaching in mind, she is able to use her knowledge and love of reading to help influence her power.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
"If she could be this wealthy and have power over so many people, but couldn't grow her own garden, what kind of freedom was that?" Amal Unbound page 103
Throughout Amal Unbound, Aisha Saeed is breaking what we think we know about the world. We may know a lot about the United States and what we believe in here, but we lack a lot of knowledge of what is going on elsewhere. Knowing that this text is present day really hits you emotionally. While girls are in school here and becoming scientists, politicians, and teachers, girls like Amal are fighting for their right to do the same. This quote from page 103 is referring to even someone in power not having the right to do something. Nasreen Baji, the wife of Khan Sahib, isn't able to visit her home, garden, or do anything she once loved just because of who she is today. She may have power, but she certainly doesn't have freedom. I think focusing on how "stereotypes" and norms in our society may be different than others is something that helps a lot with critical literacy. Seeing first hand a child who may be the same age as the students reading this book having a very different lifestyle is something students should realize and view critically. Since people in today's society don't have to think about not going to school because they are a girl or becoming an indentured servant, this book opens up a sliding glass door for the reader to enter into a different world, a world people have to go through everyday.
Gender Roles
"Sometimes I wish I did not pay such careful attention. Maybe then I would not have learned that they thought being a girl was such a bad thing." (page 21)
In Pakistan, it is believed that a boy child is better for the family because they will be able to take care of the parents when they get older. In Pakistan's culture, when girls get married, they are technically leaving the family to become part of her husband's family. This brings such a weight for Amal's family when her sister is born. Their family is still all girls and brings such a burden onto Amal's parents. Amal now being the oldest member in the family, even though she is a girl, she has to stay home to take care of her family while her mother is recovering from birth. She is being taken away from her education to deal with taking care of the home and younger sisters.
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"If I were a son, would he so casually tell me to forget my dreams." (page 43)
Amal has this constant question in her heard all throughout her life. If she was a boy, how would this be different? Would she be sent away to help her family pay off loans? Would she be taken out of school to help her mother? Would people around her treat her differently? This is something that Amal and other girls in Pakistan worry about. Even though the circumstances are different, I believe this could still be relevant in our society today. Unlike girls in Pakistan, girls in the United States are able to do what they want, but they face discrimination from outsiders. Students can use their previous knowledge of being discriminated against to fully understand how Amal is feeling being taken away from her dreams of becoming a teacher.
Power
"His car hit me. He took my things. Why am I the one in trouble?" (page 55)
Throughout the book, Amal is constantly learning the lesson that life is unfair by her family and people in power. She was being taken away from everything she loved just because she did one thing wrong. People in power are overusing their authority to make the people around them unhappy. They know they won't get in trouble by it because of fear and who they are. That is unfair. That is something that happens everywhere in the world. Luckily Amal was able to overcome this lesson and teach Jawad Sahib his own lesson. This is so empowering because Amal is just a young girl who knew she had to do something right. She had no power, no connections, no understanding, but she did have the knowledge needed to take down a powerful man. I believe people will be more likely to take a stance when they have knowledge in a subject. In Amal's case, it was being able to read what was going on in her society. People were so used to gossiping to spread news, but she was able to see it first hand. It doesn't take a lot, but it does take knowledge and courage to take a stand against something that seems indestructible.
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"Nabila was right. It did feel surreal. But I glanced at the newspaper in her lap. The black-and-white photos looking back at me were proof that is wasn't a dream. After all the people he had hurt, after the generations this family had haunted, we helped bring Jawad Sahib and his father to justice. I smiled." (page 219)
Role Models
I believe in today's society, we see authors like Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, J.K Rowling, etc. as role models. We are idolizing white European culture when there are so many famous writers all around the world who could make just as big of an impact on our lives. Amal idolizes Ghalib, Rumi, and Iqbal as writers that have made her who she is today. It inspired her love for learning and reading.
"Pakistan was founded by the dreams of poets. Aren't we of the same earth?" (page 3)
I believe that introducing these authors while reading this text will really show why Amal idolized them the way that she did. Why reading their stories allowed her to find peace as she was a servant to an evil family. Just like in The Parker's Inheritance, using other authors within a text can help you further understand the character's values and the culture.
Click on picture for Ghalib's poetry
Click on picture for Muhammad Iqbal's poetry
Click on picture for Rumi's poetry
Resources About:
TAKING ACTION
Identity Lesson
Readers can talk about identity of not only a character of the book, but also of themselves. Each hand represents either Amal or the reader. They can write or draw pictures of the different things that represent the two people. They can then use what they know about their identity to make a change in a community. The hands represent activism and how we can do stuff ourselves to make a change in the world.
How to Deepen a Theme
Amal Unbound is all about a character taking a stand in something they believed in. Amal was upset with how power could take over a community. It took away all of her dreams just because of one mistake she made. Power can be unfair anywhere in the world, all it takes is a strong person to make a change. Rather than using the theme of people that take a stand we can think even deeper about details in the book that can enhance this broad theme.
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Strong females that take a stand to disrupt gender stereotypes
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Amal wanted an education, wanted to be free, and wanted to change things in her society one way or another. This makes her a strong female character that is often left out of stories. She is breaking gender stereotypes in Pakistan and is a role model for all. There are many stories that can continue this theme:
Other ways characters can take a stand:
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Gender stereotypes
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Climate change
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Disability
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Racial discrimination
SHARED READING
With Amal Unbound
Shared Reading is very different than Read Alouds. Reading aloud is when the teacher reads a book out loud to a group of students. Shared reading is the same process, but students have access to the text in some form: having a copy of the book or displaying it on a document camera. You are able to teach more common core standards with a shared reading because students can see the text and apply their understanding. You can participate in a gradual release of responsibility model when you can provide the text to the student to practice these strategies applied to the standards. A good reader should be able to:
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Activate background knowledge
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Predict
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Visualize
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Connecting
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Summarizing
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Synthesizing
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Make inferences
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Generating questions
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Self monitoring (metacognition) ***
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Use text structure/feature to help with comprehension
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Vocabulary
MODEL THESE STRATEGIES SO READERS KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE AND WHAT TO DO
***This strategy is important but often overlooked
Metacognition: thinking about your thinking. While reading, students will know when they don't know something and what to do to fix this problem.
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"Wow I just read that entire page and I was in a total daydream. I have no idea what I just read. What should I do?" Reread or read ahead to see if the information is answered on the next page.
Formulating Questions
Creating questions not only helps us with comprehension, but it also helps with creating further interest in reading more from the text or other sources. We ask questions before, during and after. Before we predict what we think might happen in the text, during we help with comprehension, and after we use questions to help with discussion. Sometimes it is hard to formulate questions, especially when you are just being introduced to this concept. Even as an expert reader, sometimes it's hard to start this thinking process. A way readers can start to think of questions is to start with the stem "I wonder..."
Use this chart after a chapter of reading. Help readers think of important events that may have happened in the "I know..." section. The phrasing of this helps readers understand that they may know a lot more than they think rather than asking for the important events. The "I wonder.." section helps readers start comprehending the predicting the text. Next move onto guided reading groups.
Ready...Set... HIKE
Group names:
Honesty
Integrity
Kindness
Excellence
When moving from "I wonder..." statements to asking who, what, when, where, why, and how questions, use the Give Me Five strategy. Students will draw their hand in their reader's notebook. Each finger will represent the 5 W question stems and the palm will represent the how question. Students will write 6 questions on what they just read on each of the fingers and palm.
Characterization
Character Traits vs. Emotion
Flocabulary: Characters
When learning about character traits, it is difficult to determine while reading a full text like Amal Unbound. The text is so complex and the traits may be changing over the many chapters. When being introduced to deep thinking words, picture books are the best options. Students can begin to see different character traits in different situations when reading shorter books. They can then link the traits to the book and then later connect it to other characters based on their previous background knowledge. To help activate this, print off the book covers of the books you practiced on, then put a list of the vocabulary words and new words beside the book so kids can help activate what they had previously learned.
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Once readers know a lot of character traits, practice more within a chapter book. Create a gallery walk of all the different characters in the book. Write down what we know, traits and even emotions of what the character has gone through throughout the text.
Character Trait and Emotion Lists
