I Dare to Say: African Women Share Their Stories of Hope and Survival
In 23 searing personal testimonies, women in rural Uganda today speak out about what they have suffered and witnessed, including family feuds and domestic violence; survival with AIDS; civil war atrocities of abduction, rape, and massacre; and the torture and trauma of female genital mutilation (FGM). A wife is thrown out because she only gives birth to girls, and “Educating a girl is a waste of money.” Imbued with horror, the writing is often heartbreaking, including in the eloquent introductions, one for each story, by an interviewer from FEMRITE, a Uganda’s Women Writers’ Association. An educated girl remembers her mother “with a hoe on her shoulder and a child on her back.” A mother remembers her daughter, 14, who left school with an HIV-AIDs infected man and did not come back. A woman tries to stay busy cleaning her house, but “there was no one to make it dirty.” Although FGM is now officially criminalized, some still insist on the tradition, and it continues in secret. Breaking that secrecy, this collection will move readers to action. --Hazel Rochman