Reviews
The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria by Helon Habila
mandyist's review
4.0
On the evening of 14-15 April 2014, Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 female students from the Government Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. The girls became known the world over as the 'Chibok Girls' yet surprisingly little is known about who they are, what their families are going through or the context in which this crime occurred. To date, in December 2016, almost 200 of the original abductees remains missing and the little that we do know is that their lives with Boko Haram are ones of untold horror, violence and sexual slavery.
Helon Habila is a Nigerian born author and professor of creative writing at George Mason University, Washington, D.C. In early 2016, he returned to Nigeria to take a road trip to Maiduguri and Chibok to speak to people not only about the events on that fateful evening in 2014, but about the long wait for the girls to return home and the present climate of war and strife in the region.
Habila has produced a chronicle of his time in Nigeria in the short but incredibly insightful The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria.
The book begins with accounts of the events of 14 April 2014 from parents and relatives of the girls who were taken and those that escaped. The residents of Chibok had received warnings that the town would be targeted that day and they had every reason to believe it. Massacres, assassinations and terrorist attacks have become ever more prevalent in what locals have begun to call the war with Boko Haram.
Just 9 months before the abduction of the girls from Chibok, Boko Haram militants entered a secondary school in Mamudo, Yobe State and killed 42 people, most of them students.
After spending time in Chibok, Habila moves on to Maiduguri and the heart of Boko Haram territory. He speaks of the effects of the civil war and how a divide was created between Christians and Muslims as successive governments misused state resources, culminating in the declaration of Sharia law in the area in 1999. Perhaps most chilling is the description of the rise of Boko Haram from a modest force to one to be reckoned with following the Boko Haram uprising in June / July 2009.
Moving back to Chibok, Habila collects yet more first-hand accounts of the fears and devastation of a community who have lost their daughters, sisters and friends.
Woven throughout the book is the story of the girls and the accounts of those who have escaped. Perhaps to be expected with the youth of the girls and the horrors that they experienced, there is very little in the book about their time with Boko Haram. Indeed, with so few escapees (and being that the book was in production at the time 21 girls were released in October 2016), we are but depending on the narratives of a handful of very traumatised girls.
Confronted with their reticence in the face on ongoing questions about their experiences, Habila notes the following:
Hauwa, Ladi, and Juliana were ordinary girls, young enough to be my daughter, who had been raised to almost mythic status by their extraordinary experience – Helon Habila, The Chibok Girls
Insightful, powerful and intimate, The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria is highly recommended for those interested in gaining a more in-depth perspective of the lives and people effected by Boko Haram activities.
The book is out in the States and will be released in the UK on 15 December 2016.
bigdaddystout's review
3.25
sir_presh's review
3.0
The writing is quite easy to read but the style was just not it.
All in all, I was looking to reading a book with indepth knowledge of the Chibok Girls kidnappings. This was not it
hannekedom's review against another edition
3.0
deckle_edged_dre's review
4.0
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Description: On April 15, 2014, 267 girls from the Chibok Secondary School in northern Nigeria were kidnapped by Boko Haram, the world's deadliest terrorist group. Most were never heard from again. Acclaimed Nigerian novelist Helon Habila tracks down some of the escaped girls and their families to hear their stories and to offer the most complete and intimate account yet of this horrible tragedy that stunned the world.
Book Appeal Terms:
Genre: Collective Biographies; Life stories; Politics and global affairs
Writing Style: Compelling; Thoughtful
liralen's review against another edition
3.0
Habila comes at the events as a reporter, digging into Nigeria's history to explain the rise of Boko Haram. It's a really useful background. That said, the title of the book is misleading: it's not about the girls. It's not even really about the kidnapping. At the very very end of the book, Habila talks about a chance he had to sit down with three of the kidnapped girls, who managed to escape the night of the kidnapping:
There was really nothing new in their story. Except for the particular details, it was the same story I had read in the papers, the same story told by the girls in America in their various interviews. They woke up to sounds of gunfire, they were herded into trucks, and they jumped off and ran into the night. There was nothing more to tell. Surely, their interviewers must tell themselves, there had to be something more some individual act of valor, some unique observation? But there wasn't. The shocking banality of it.
Hauwa, Ladi, and Juliana were ordinary girls, young enough to be my daughters, who had been raised to almost mythic status by their extraordinary experience. The same could even be said about many Boko Haram members, who were ordinary boys in dirty shirts and slippers, shooting at whatever they were told to shoot at by their handlers. ... Hauwa, Ladi, and Juliana were ordinary girls who had taken a leap of faith off that truck and into the night, and that had made the difference between them and those who were taken. Like most things in life, it all came down to chance, opportunity, and desperation. There was no single explanation. (109)And...gosh, my feelings are mixed. On the one hand, no, these three probably have no more story about the day of the kidnapping than they've already told. On the other hand, if a book is indeed meant to be about the girls in question...there are a lot more stories to tell. I knew nothing, going into the book, about the lives of the girls at the girls' secondary school in Chibok—their lives at school or their lives at home, their personalities, their families, anything like that. And...I know nothing more about their lives, having finished the book.
I assume that Habila simply didn't have that kind of access—he talks about the hoops he had to jump through just to do the on-the-ground research he was able to do for this book. When he visited Chibok, the town was still under heavy guard and journalists weren't welcome. In some ways Habila was in a good position to write a book about Boko Haram and the Chibok kidnappings (having grown up in Nigeria, he was familiar with the area and the cultures, but he also had outside perspective and resources), but in other ways...perhaps someday one of the girls who escaped later will be in a position to write a book, or a journalist will tell the stories of the girls and their families and as much as can be known of what has become of them. In the meantime...this is useful, but mostly for background.
ohheyemilyk's review
5.0