A review by emiged
A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman by Lisa J. Shannon
3.0
After the spate of difficult subjects about which I've chosen to educate myself lately, I'm going to need a huge dose of something light, fluffy and chipper. Ugh.
Ms. Shannon founded Run for Congo Women after being moved to action by an episode of Oprah focused on the indescribable horrors the war in Congo has visited on the innocent citizens there. Up to 7 million people have been killed and additional millions have been tortured, mutilated, raped and traumatized. Ms. Shannon wanted to do something more than cluck her tongue with pity and move on with her life, so she started to raise funds and raise awareness. She finally decided to take a five week trip to the Congo to meet the women she sponsored through Women for Women International.
The stories of what happened to these men, women, and children are brutal and not for the weak-stomached. I appreciated in a very real way what Zainab Salbi described in the foreword as "the privilege of not witnessing atrocities, the privilege of being heard, or having the resources to survive." Those truly are privileges, but I take them so for granted every day. The one line in the book that literally took my breath away was when Ms. Shannon described a young European UNCHR staffer's explanation of security for returning refugees. "Rape here is so common," she says. "It's cultural."
Despite the horror of the stories, the importance of making them known to as wide an audience as possible, and my admiration for Ms. Shannon's perhaps foolhardy decision to travel to Congo, the narrative sometimes fell flat for me. I wanted it to be more about the culture and the people of Congo and why the rest of the world seems uninterested in preventing additional violence there. Ms. Shannon's take on events and her relationships with Ted and D seemed occasionally self-indulgent (which, to her credit, she acknowledges).
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.
Ms. Shannon founded Run for Congo Women after being moved to action by an episode of Oprah focused on the indescribable horrors the war in Congo has visited on the innocent citizens there. Up to 7 million people have been killed and additional millions have been tortured, mutilated, raped and traumatized. Ms. Shannon wanted to do something more than cluck her tongue with pity and move on with her life, so she started to raise funds and raise awareness. She finally decided to take a five week trip to the Congo to meet the women she sponsored through Women for Women International.
The stories of what happened to these men, women, and children are brutal and not for the weak-stomached. I appreciated in a very real way what Zainab Salbi described in the foreword as "the privilege of not witnessing atrocities, the privilege of being heard, or having the resources to survive." Those truly are privileges, but I take them so for granted every day. The one line in the book that literally took my breath away was when Ms. Shannon described a young European UNCHR staffer's explanation of security for returning refugees. "Rape here is so common," she says. "It's cultural."
Despite the horror of the stories, the importance of making them known to as wide an audience as possible, and my admiration for Ms. Shannon's perhaps foolhardy decision to travel to Congo, the narrative sometimes fell flat for me. I wanted it to be more about the culture and the people of Congo and why the rest of the world seems uninterested in preventing additional violence there. Ms. Shannon's take on events and her relationships with Ted and D seemed occasionally self-indulgent (which, to her credit, she acknowledges).
For more book reviews, come visit my blog, Build Enough Bookshelves.