Under The Burning Sun began with an intimate moment between me and my mother. While she was being treated for late-stage Alzheimer's, I sat at her beside and noticed a scar -- long and deep along her stomach -- a scar left by a hysterectomy (the surgical removal the uterus, 'the womb'). I remembered the day after her surgery, she asked me: "Am I still a woman?"

 

Everything was quiet. I didn't have an answer.
Ten years later, I still don't have one.
Under The Burning Sun asks the same questions and more:
"What does it mean to be a woman?"
"What does it mean to not have a choice?"

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I hope that, through this story, its world, and its protagonist,
we can move closer to answers to questions like these.