Better late than never, eh? For our third book club choice, we've gone with a reader's suggestion, "Half The Sky" -- and I have to say that I'm only 50 pages or so into it and I'm hooked!b I'm kind of bummed every time I have to put the book down, which is a good feeling to have when it comes to books.
From two of our most fiercely moral voices, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world. With Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet with extraordinary women struggling there. Among them is a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth.
Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity and, ultimately, hope. They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon.
Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it’s also the best strategy for fighting poverty.
Deeply felt, pragmatic and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen.
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We hope you'll join us and grab a copy today. A big thanks to Shasta for her recommendation. You spoke and we listened!
The Basics:
1. FBC is hosted by the Jennifers: Grimmricksen & Grits and Moxie.
2. We will read one book a month & will announce the chosen book on the first of each month (fingers crossed)
3. The final book selection will be made by us, but we LOVE suggestions!
4. Our choices will cover a lot of ground: fiction/non-fiction, classic/modern, etc. We want to read a wide variety of work focusing on issues particularly important to women. Sexuality, body issues, motherhood... all of it is fair game. We want to expose folks to work that they might not have thought to read on their own or books that have been gathering dust at the bottom of a massive 'to read' list.
*I feel like I need to point out that you don't need to dedicate a whole post to the club or a book review or whatnot. Linking up here simply means that you plan on reading the book this month -- and we want to come by and say hello to fellow feminists!. At the end of the month, if you do decide to post a review or something, please feel free to come back and link up to that specific post so that we can all go and read it!*
