Fill my Heart with Half the Sky

Welcome to Waking Luna!

For those of you who mourned the demise of my “Ramblings” Blog about single life in NYC – I’m back! And though 19 months later I am no longer single or in the city (read: Manhattan), the theme of this blog, at its heart, is not entirely different from what I wrote about before: women, and the issues we face.

Specifically, this blog is about my journey to immerse myself in the world of human rights issues as they pertain to women and actively involve myself in this cause. Through the stories of my journey, I hope to encourage others to do the same. I also hope that by knowing I have an audience (hi audience!) I will be more motivated to push forward in my efforts.

So now that you know where I’m coming from, I can tell you how it all began – with a simple internet search for topics affecting women on The New York Times website, just because I wanted to see what I would find. A few clicks later, I came across Half The Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Pulitzer Prize winning couple Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. A few days later, I bought it.

The book meticulously documents some of the gravest issues facing women around the globe today, from sex trafficking to genital mutilation, to lack of maternity care and limited to no access to education. It is a CALL TO ACTION for us to wake up and speak out against these issues, not as “women’s issues” but as human rights issues, akin to slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It’s difficult to read this book and not cry, or to close it and act like it never happened. But don’t let that deter you. If you buy one book this year - buy this one.

The stories are both inspirational and heartbreaking.

Consider Meena, an Indian Muslim kidnapped and sold into the sex trafficking business before the age of ten. Savagely beaten and drugged to force her compliance, Meena was a prisoner in the brothel for over a dozen years before she managed to escape, but it would be longer before she could re-unite with her children, both of whom were forced to stay behind by the brothel’s owners.

Or Prudence, a twenty-four year old mother of three dying in a hospital bed in Cameroon as a result of a blocked pregnancy, who endured three days of labor before an untrained birth attendant sat down on her stomach and jumped up and down on it, rupturing her uterus. An emergency cesarean could have saved her but the hospital refused to perform the surgery without the $100 fee and the family said it had no money. Help eventually came – but it was too late.

Half the Sky profiles inspirational women around the world who have already taken strides to end these terrible injustices and lays out a plan of action for us to become involved on our own end and to rally others around the cause. While some of the statistics are numbing (one maternal death every minute) and the issues seem overwhelming in scope (changing cultures’ perceptions of women as inferior) – there is hope yet.

Just read the book to find out.

And be advised - you don’t need to be a feminist to appreciate this book. I wouldn’t call it a “feminist work” at all. You don’t even need to be a woman.

You just need to be human – with an open heart.

Thanks for joining me on my journey. Let’s wake Luna!

Carly

P.S. Tomorrow I am attending the two-day UNIFEM/USNC annual national conference - Strategic Imperatives for Ending Violence Against Women. Stay tuned for updates – good things ahead!