Gender

The collection of short stories examines how one's gender places expectations of obligatory roles in society. In "Candy for Hanif," Sister Norah is expected to perform certain tasks and duties as a result of her being a woman and nothing else. For one, she is now a single mother who is tasked with taking care of her cognitively disabled son whose disability occasionally causes him to lash out at her violently. Before that, she was solely responsible for both taking care of him and her ailing, much older husband, who was dying of an illness. It sounds like she was married to her husband at least partially because the Temple set it up, making it seem like she had little autonomy in deciding who (or even whether) to marry. Lunell, her friend, was in a similar situation until her husband died and she left the Temple...