The Girl with Three Legs

Phyllis Chesler's fascinating read about Soraya Miré, a Somali woman with relatives in Canada who want to do her harm if she ever enters this country. It's a sad tale of  FGM performed on  young women by their own mothers and other females. I have added two books mentioned in the article to my reading list. One is Phyllis Chesler's Woman's Inhumanity to Woman and Soraya Miré's The Girl with Three Legs

Soraya Miré is a beautiful and talented Somali feminist, a filmmaker, and the author of a new and daring memoir titled The Girl With Three Legs. Soraya lives in Los Angeles and she has the Hollywood-speak down pat. Everyone is “darling,” and “honey,” things are “awesome.” But, through it all, one can still see the Somali African in her. She greets people on the street, café waiters—mere strangers—with warmth and humor, with an easy familiarity, just as if they were clan or tribal members. “What a funny dog! And how are you today?” She wears a strong Biblical fragrance: Frank Incense, a “spiritual body oil,” which I imagine the Queen of Sheba might have worn on her visit with King Solomon. She keeps her main stash in a jeweled, French-African perfume bottle.....

Other things that come to light in the article:

.....In the 1970s, it was forbidden for Somali women to wear the face veil. Now, it is forbidden to be naked faced. Now, we are not allowed to cook a certain kind of dish because, when it is prepared and served, it looks like a Star of David. Now, Somali women are not allowed to wear a bra. But for the last six months, al-Shabab have been feeling girls and women up in the street to see if she is or isn’t wearing a bra......

h/t: Pam