![]() ![]() Simple and straightforward in its telling, this is an informative and thoroughly engaging narrative-making more painful a disquieting sense as the book ends that Ali's big victory offers the promise of change to other young girls but no true restoration of her girlhood she's about 12 now. Nujood’s childhood came to an abrupt end when her father arranged for her to be married to a man three times her age. As Ali's life (“I have always obeyed the orders of my father and brothers”) moves into the public sphere, she discovers (fortunately) the compassionate judges and the dedicated lawyer of a more urbane Yemen. Uplifting and impossible to put down, this is a true story of the ten-year old girl who won a divorce from the man she was forced to marry, courageously defying both Yemeni customs and her own family. Through her unwavering focus on Ali's young life and her big victory, on her pre-pubescent innocence and ignorance, the reader is taken inside one poor, recently rural Yemeni household. French journalist Minoui renders Ali's life from the young child's perspective without sensationalism, as respectful of Ali's faith as affected by her courage. ![]() Headlines traveled around the globe in the spring of 2008 when the barely 10-year-old Nujood Ali “found the courage to knock on the courtroom door” she had come seeking a divorce from the sexually abusive and violent 30-ish man, a marriage arranged by her father. ![]()
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