"Let It Be a Boy": Kazakh Girl Listed as NYT Letter Contest Winner

Fariza Fazyl, a student at the Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Astana, has been named among the winners of The New York Times Open Letter Contest, Orda.kz reports.

According to Otandastar Foundation, her letter was addressed to a girl named Ulbolsyn and highlighted cultural biases around naming traditions in Kazakhstan:

You don’t know me, but I know you. I’ve met in a hundred different places. In classrooms, at bus stops, in stories told in hushed voices over tea. I’ve met you in the way your mother’s voice softens when she says your name, as if it’s an apology. I’ve met you in the way your father looks past you, still waiting for the son that never came. 

Nearly 10,000 students from around the world entered the competition.

Fariza’s letter explored how names like Ulbolsyn, meaning “Let it be a boy,” carry the burden of unmet expectations in traditional families:

But you. You were born with expectations stitched into your skin. Your name was the first thing the world ever gave you, and it was never really yours.

Ulbolsyn, Ұлболсын: Let there be a boy.

That’s what they called you. That’s what they wished for when they held you for the first time. Not you. Someone else. And yet, you stayed. You learned to carry the weight of their disappointment with a quiet kind of grace.

Her letter draws attention to selective abortion and the devaluation of girls in societies where sons are preferred. Fariza emphasizes,

Original Author: Anastasia Prilepskaya