fascinating and interesting memoir of a person I had vaguely heard of but never really looked into, and her life is so inspiring and brave. tysm for the arc.

This book was an education. I had heard about FGM but never understood is far-reaching impact on so many lives or how it is ingrained in religion and culture. I'm grateful for people like Dukureh having the courage to speak out and to share her story, and I dearly hope it has a lasting impact on generations to come. Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for the chance to read and offer my honest review.

I Will Scream to the World by Jaha Marie Dukureh is a fascinating memoir about a brave young woman. Ms. Dukureh was the victim of female genital mutilation as an infant. At the age of 15 she was sent from her home country of Gambia to the US for a force arranged marriage with a man decades older than her. She escaped this marriage while living in the US as an undocumented immigrant and found herself a child bride a second time. Despite this harrowing childhood, Ms. Dukureh persevered, prioritized her education allowing her to become an activist.

I recommend this book. Ms. Dukureh is an inspiring woman who has made significant impacts.

I give this book 4 stars. The memoir reads more like a collection of essays. Some of the essays and stories felt incomplete. Some of the essays included did not support the overall narrative in my opinion. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Jaha Marie Dukureh is a Gambian American women’s rights activist, survivor of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and forced child marriage, Regional UN Women Goodwill Ambassador for Africa, and one of the youngest Africans ever to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Her extraordinary memoir dives into her childhood to show the root causes of her crusading, shares her personal and professional life, and explore a practice that while violent and troubling, is often culturally misunderstood. It is a story of resilience and extraordinary fearlessness.

In another time and place, Dukureh's story might have been simple. She grew up with a fair amount of privilege in The Gambia, and for the most part the odds were in her favor. Except: her community practiced female genital mutilation (FGM),* and when she was pushed into an arranged marriage at the age of 15, she learned just how devastating the results could be.

I've read a reasonable—not huge—amount about FGM before, and I always appreciate memoirs that are by people who are working to change things within their own communities; there's nothing wrong with a well-done outsider memoir, but truths hit differently when they're written by people who have lived them. And Dukureh has done a lot with her life: after not one but two child marriages (in the US, it should be noted, lest you think that this is not a western problem), she started speaking out to raise awareness of, and laws against, FGM and more generally to improve the lives of girls in her communities. I'll note again that the issues she talks about are not unique to one region, and that she did not get the support she needed as a teenager: "When I told the school guidance counselor...in New York City what was going to be done to me, she did not believe me." (loc. 445**)

The material is gripping and the activism powerful. The writing and the structure of the book are neither of those things. Dukureh is not a trained writer, of course, and sometimes it's worth it to just tell the story anyway, but I think a ghostwriter could have helped here. Significant events are covered in rapid fire, often with litanies of awards bestowed and important people met; there's a chapter in the middle that would be better suited as part of an Acknowledgements section; the structure shifts between chronological and thematic; we hear over and over how grateful Dukureh is to have received so many accolades...and just, I'm not that interested in awards received and famous people befriended. I'm interested in the work that she's doing, and the conversations that she's having, that get skimmed over in the book.

I'd also have *loved* to see more discussion of what it means to *ban* FGM vs. what it means to *end* FGM; Ashley Judd notes in the foreword that there is a "shocking prevalence of FGM even in [the United States], despite the fact that FGM is illegal here" (loc. 57), but most of the discussion in the book is more about what it takes to ban FGM elsewhere, not what conversations have to be had with the people and communities practicing it to get the community support to end it rather than just pushing it deeper into the shadows.

This wouldn't be high on my reading recommendation lists, but I expect to hear more about Dukureh in the future—she has ambitious plans.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Some sources prefer the term "female genital cutting" (FGC) in the interest of keeping lines of dialogue open with those who support the practice; for the sake of this review, I'll follow Dukureh's lead and call it FGM.

**Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.