My Story. My Fight. My Hope for Girls Everywhere.
July 1, 2024
In her debut memoir, Dukureh shares the story of her childhood in Gambia and the events that spurred her to become a global activist and leader. A survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced child marriage, she founded an organization that seeks to eradicate these practices and was a key advocate in legislation that banned FGM in Gambia. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2024 Library Journal
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 25, 2025
Like actor Ashley Judd, who penned the foreword, Dukureh lost her mom and survived male sexual assault. Unlike Judd, Dukureh grew up in The Gambia, where she was a victim of female genital mutilation. Her Islamic religious leader father, a polygamist with three wives and 33 children, arranged a marriage for her with a much older man. At 15, when she is sent to be with him, she learns that he can't immediately consummate the marriage because her clitoris and labia were removed and her vagina was sewn shut. In her introduction, she immediately makes it clear how she felt about this decision: "FGM is wrong and child marriage is not different from rape." Despite the memoir's title, Dukureh knows that "shrillness and tirades" are less effective than presenting facts, sharing stories, planting seeds, and nourishing ideas. Now in her thirties, she shares her journey "from victim to survivor to activist." After all, the World Health Organization estimates that more than 200 million women and girls alive today also went through FGM (also known as cutting or female circumcision). Because of her work to ban FGM, Dukureh became a L'Oreal international global brand ambassador, one of Time magazine's 2016 100 most influential people in the world, a nominee for a Nobel Peace Prize, and the subject of the 2017 documentary Jaha's Promise. It's inspiring that Dukureh's work led to awareness of FGM in the U.S. and to it being banned in The Gambia.
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