Same blog, slightly different girl.

Hello again! It's been just over a year since that torrid Sacramento summer when I sat hunched over my laptop in the library with dark chocolate and cranberries and gave life to this book blog. Needless to say, a lot has happened since then! I still have an affinity for the fruit-chocolate thing, but my literary tastes have undergone a bit of a metamorphosis that I can only attribute to the crazy couple of semesters I've had. I remember when I used to shudder at the thought of reading non-fiction for leisure; not so much the case anymore. That change actually began with a book I read last summer, The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti. Her book also ignited within me the fires of feminism and ultimately led me to change my minor from French to Women and Gender Studies (this is going somewhere, I promise). That, combined with my exposure to such prolific and inspiring writers as bell hooks, Truman Capote, and Katherine Boo convinced me of something that you'd think, as a journalist, I would have known for awhile now: real life has every potential of being as captivating as fiction.


Enter my first review of the summer.

I'll admit, when I removed candy-colored tissue paper on my 21st birthday to uncover a paperback copy of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, I was slightly confused. Maybe it was the quizzical look my roommate shot me; maybe it was the mimosa. Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL for women's rights, but I just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea of receiving a birthday gift with the word "oppression" emblazoned across the cover. Then I did my research, and found out that this book, written by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, both New York Times journalists and the first couple ever to receive a Pulitzer Prize (yeah, I know), is a national bestseller, has been voted one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post in 2009, etc. So as summertime set in and my library fines prevented me from utilizing its services, I cracked it open and began to read.


You know how friends sometimes know you better than you know yourself? Yeah, this was one of those times. Currently eating crow, be back soon.


Half the Sky focuses on three major ways in which women and girls are globally oppressed: sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality. Although these issues occur on every inhabited continent, they are particularly prevalent in developing countries in Asia and Africa, the locations upon which this book focuses. Having recently done a project on commercial sex trafficking in New York City, I was emotionally prepared for the testimonies I read about 13-year-old girls from Cambodia who think they're going to another country to pick fruit and make money for their families, but end up in a brothel where they are systematically beaten and raped. Same goes for the distraught tales of gender-base violence, which is so deeply embedded in some conservative religions that some surveyed women actually agree that husbands have a right to beat their wives. But the rate at which maternal mortality occurs in countries like Niger (1 in 7 girls and women will die during childbirth here), and the causes of these deaths (enter obstetric fistulas, caused by failed childbirth and results in holes forming between the rectum and vagina, or the bladder and vagina. I considered sparing you the graphic details, but then I realized, that's exactly the problem), truly shook me. I can only imagine the contorted facial expressions I displayed on Muni as I read the visceral tales of young girls left, essentially, to die in huts because the cultures in which they were brought up place women's medical needs at the bottom of its priority list.

But the book isn't all sob stories and sobering statistics. In fact, every chapter concludes with a feature of some phenomenal woman who dedicates her life to combating issues that continue to haunt women. From opening hospitals in East Africa to establishing microcredit programs in Pakistan, these women come from all walks of life (although there did seem to be an initial focus on White, Western women as "the rescuers," which I took a slight issue with) and are united by their lifelong dedication to elevate the status of women worldwide. One of the underlying themes in the book is the idea that to ignore women and their potential to become scholars, doctors, businesswomen--anything they want to be--is to attempt to run a country having only tapped into half its valuable resources. Half the Sky is a call to action like no other, truly a work that transforms how you view the world long before you reach the back cover.


On deck: a heart-wrenching and poetic tale written by an esteemed Latin American author (See? I still love me my love stories!)