I Am the Beggar of the World

Critics praised the window the poems offered into the lives of women in Afghanistan as well as Murphy's photographs and other contextual materials included by Griswold.

[1] The American poet Eliza Griswold traveled around Afghanistan with Seamus Murphy, a photographer, to collect landays from remote places around the nation.

[4] The titular landay, for instance, came from a woman living near Jalalabad in a refugee camp whose husband was dying:[1] In my dream, I am the president.

He felt the context of the poems made them more powerful and that the landays offered "remarkable" stories of women in a culture where their voices were often silenced.

[1] A review published in Ohio State University's The Journal said that the book "adds a new chapter to the ancient story of human indomitability".