Saturday, December 30, 2017

Book Review: The Last Girl



Title:  The Last Girl
Subtitle:  My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State
Author:  Nadia Murad
Genre:  Memoir
Publisher:  Tim Duggan Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC
Number of Pages:  306
My Rating:  5/5

Talk about a painful book to read. No amount of foreknowledge gleaned from a variety of news reports over the last half decade had the ability to prepare me for the raw, intimate, heartbreaking details of this young woman's ordeal at the hands of ISIS. That she has the bravery to tell the world of the brutal atrocities she and her family and neighbors endured (and are still enduring) is astonishing to me. I'm not sure I could muster up such courage. But I applaud her for doing so, as what she has to share is important and necessary for us to hear if we ever hope to defeat terrorism in all parts of the world.

Murad was 21 years old when her home town of Kocho, Iraq, was invaded and taken over by ISIS forces in 2014. Her life was turned upside down by the evil that killed, the evil that kidnapped, the evil that raped, the evil that pillaged and destroyed all she held dear. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine? She helps us to imagine, for she lived through the nightmare and escaped to freedom, but that freedom did not restore what was lost. With the help of other survivors and activists, Murad has been able to slowly rebuild her life and come forward with a message we all must respond to about the horrors of genocide and human trafficking.

In her first public address at a United Nations forum on minority issues in 2015, Murad shared that she "was only one of hundreds of thousands of Yazidi victims. (Her) community was scattered, living as refugees inside and outside of Iraq, and Kocho was still occupied by ISIS. There was so much the world needed to hear about what was happening to Yazidis." Her desire is to "keep (her) culture and religion alive and to bring ISIS to justice for their crimes" even though with every retelling of her personal story she says she relives the terror inflicted on her and others. Her story "told honestly and matter-of-factly is the best weapon (she) has against terrorism" and "more than anything else, (she) wants to be the last girl in the world with a story like (hers)."



Disclaimer:  I received this book from www.bloggingforbooks.com in exchange for a fair and honest review


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