Book Club: I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

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As you already know, I’m a contributor to the Philly Moms Blog, which is a Silicon Valley Moms group site.  The SV Moms group hosts at least one book club a month and I signed up since 1. I love to read & 2. I’ve always wanted to chat more on my blog about books that I’ve read.  This is my first SV Moms Book Club post, so I wanted to fill you in before you think I’ve completely run off the “totally random” deep end.

This month’s book was “I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced.”  The story of Nujood is shocking, of course, because in our culture we can’t imagine a young girl being married off before puberty to a man triple her age.  But the real premise of the story is how shocking it was for Nujood to speak up for herself and demand a divorce.  The marriage itself was a last ditch effort of her parents’ to try to protect Nujood from “dishonor” (a very common theme in her Yemeni culture) and also provide for her, since her family could barely afford to feed all of the family members.  Since this type of marriage seems to happen often enough in Yemen (and God knows where else), the real essence of Nujood’s story is her bravery in facing the ordeal she had to endure before she was granted a divorce.

I had all the predictable emotions when I read this book (“I’m so thankful I live in a country where this doesn’t happen”) and thought some of the usual book-club discussion questions (like, “at what point does a family become so desperate that the parents view their children as either a commodity or a burden?”) etc. but the thought that is still resounding with me as I write this post is the cluelessness of our society to the suffering of others in the world.

Sure, if I actually sat down and thought about it, I bet I could imagine that horrific social customs like this were occuring everyday, but really, when would I?   Actually, when I think about when I really tuned in to the world of the human trafficking and modern-day slavery it wasn’t until I was in college.  When I was a junior in college, I took a course on the “global perspective” and had to write about an issue that was affecting the world at large (the AIDS epidemic was already a huge topic in the class, I had to come up with something different).  In my research I started to learn more about human trafficking and was naturally horrified with what I was learning.  But I couldn’t help thinking why didn’t I know about this before?

It’s not to say that it’s anyone’s “fault”, I mean, I’m not saying that parents should rob children of their childhood and burden them with world suffering, but to be so clueless at college age shouldn’t happen.  I was always the really sensitive type–I still can’t really watch the news without dwelling on all of the awful stories and feeling kind of helpless.  But this is where “Nujood” comes in.  This book is written in a style that is extremely simple, and not at all as graphic as you’d expect. From my old high-school teacher background, I think this should be fast-tracked to high school reading lists.

Not only is it a glimpse into a world that most of us have almost no concept of, (reading about the tribal customs in Nujood’s village, when the kids first ate “bizza”, etc. are all interesting cultural facets), but this book could really open the eyes of our country’s youth to a larger world.  A world where 10 year olds are fighting for justice instead of the latest ipod.  I would say that (especially after the Tiger Woods scandal was shoved down our throats like it was world news) it is pretty obvious our media is focusing on the wrong issues. It’s a sin that we are blasted with minute details of Sandra Bullock’s personal life, when a little voice like Nujood’s is calling out for action.

“Nujood” isn’t a ‘great beach read’, nor is it much deeper than the young author’s over-simplified perspective, but it’s a great introduction for awareness of issues affecting those outside of our culture.  So whether or not this story was intended for young people, this is definitely the sort of news our young people should be reading.

Disclosure:  I was sent a copy of this book for review purposes.  I was not obligated to write this post.  All opinions are mine.