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The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How I Fought to Save Myself, My Sister, and Thousands of Girls Wo...

Nice Leng'ete

Why we're reading this: Amazing story! Page turner!
Nice Leng'ete demonstrates how to make changes in a community, from the insid…more
[close] Amazing story! Page turner!
Nice Leng'ete demonstrates how to make changes in a community, from the inside out, using all of the tools we learned in our public health nursing classes. Remember the wheel?

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Jan 19, 2022 Nic rated it it was amazing

Shelves: africa, nonfiction, patriarchy, memoirs, social-justice, medical, autobiography, strong-women, domestic-abuse

Nice Leng'ete tells her amazing story, simply and honestly. It's definitely a page tuner! I couldn't set it down! She was an incredibly brave little girl, standing up for her rights at the age of 8, and an incredibly brave woman to continue the fight. Time Magazine honored has as one of the top 100 most influential people of 2018. watch here

Here are a few pieces from her beautiful story:

I loved my family. I loved my people. But this, I thought, was wrong. Tradition can be good. Tradition can be Nice Leng'ete tells her amazing story, simply and honestly. It's definitely a page tuner! I couldn't set it down! She was an incredibly brave little girl, standing up for her rights at the age of 8, and an incredibly brave woman to continue the fight. Time Magazine honored has as one of the top 100 most influential people of 2018. watch here

Here are a few pieces from her beautiful story:

I loved my family. I loved my people. But this, I thought, was wrong. Tradition can be good. Tradition can be beautiful. But some traditions deserve to die. 32

At the age of 8: My belly ached at the thought of being with an old man. I knew men and women did something together in secret, something men liked and women did not. 114

The roughly two hundred million women worldwide who have had some form of FGM have suffered differently, and their people have cut them for different reasons. But all forms of FGM have one thing in common: they limit and control women's lives....A girl who gets the cut is a girl whose body is no longer her own. 168

The cultural reasons for FGM may differ, as do the mechanics of the cut, but the effect is always to hurt girls. It often leads to early marriage and always leads to female subjugation. 181

FGM needs to disappear. But the girl still deserves a special ceremony in her life, and the community still deserves a celebration. We do not ask communities to give up their traditions. We ask them to replace the traditions with what we call Alternative Rites of Passage. 209

I absolutely love this scene when Nice swoops in to save her sister, who once saved her:
"I know," her husband said. "I need to stop the drinking. That is what makes me do it."
"Enough," I said. I did not scream. I did not make a scene. But I spoke firmly, with authority. "No one is going to hit Soila ever again."
"Yes, yes. It will never happen again" said her husband.
"No," I said. "Enough. You have made promises before. Now we are done. She is leaving. She is taking her children. She is never coming back." 224 ...more

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Mar 24, 2023 Erin marked it as to-read

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