Category: Women Publisher: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 203
Copyright: August 16, 2016
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
WEDLOCKED: A Story of Forced Marriage uses the true tale of one woman’s experience to introduce readers to a pervasive practice that has only recently begun tiptoeing out of hushed living rooms and into the spotlight of public discourse.
When the plainclothes police officers appeared with a warrant for her arrest, Mayah assumed that her father — a powerful figure in Nairobi’s Indian business community — was attempting to frighten her.
What she didn’t realize was that her ordeal had only just begun.
That night, while her newlywed husband languished in a jail cell, she would be driven across the border at gunpoint, sedated, and locked in an empty room for days. She would be flown across the ocean in a drugged haze and awake in a walled compound in a remote corner of northern India. Later, she would swallow pills and bleed out the child she didn’t know she carried inside her. Mayah would remain a prisoner in her family’s home until she agreed to annul her marriage and wed a husband of their choosing.
WEDLOCKED: A Story of Forced Marriage uses the true tale of one woman’s experience to introduce readers to a pervasive practice that has only recently begun tiptoeing out of hushed living rooms and into the spotlight of public discourse. Many women who had been rendered silent, threatened by familial and community pressure to accept their fates without protest, have been stepping forward to speak out about the injustice of an institution that is only barely beginning to be understood in scope and severity.
Mayah’s story is just one of thousands. But it is hers. And by telling her tale — appalling in its violence, humbling in its magnitude, and ultimately redemptive in its humanity — forced marriage as an abstract concept can be rewritten. Mayah’s story is a pathway to make the intangible tangible; to color the statistics with a voice.
Professional Reviews
EDLOCKED UNLOCKS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HEART
Forced marriage is such a painful topic to think about that I hesitated at first to order this book. But people should NOT hesitate to read it, since it is an absolutely fascinating story, based on a true history, that is by turns terrifying, uplifting, outraged, thought-provoking, and even at times lighthearted. Mayah's tale of love, betrayal, and rebirth would make a superb movie -- and the author has the good sense to interrupt the personal narrative from time to time with commentary on the scope and causes of the issue that educates as well as entertains. By the end of the book, one understands that forced marriage is not just a problem suffered by exotic people in exotic places; it is omnipresent. Most important, one lives through the whole experience with Mayah and emerges with a different sort of knowledge: a knowledge of the heart. I strongly recommend this fine book to individual readers and book clubs.
A DEFINITE READ
This book is incredibly well-written and thought-provoking. I didn't realize how prevalent forced marriages are in this world. It was a shocking read. I would recommend this to anyone. The writing, itself, is excellent, page-turning, and inspired. A DEFINITE READ.
This book has taught me
much about the reality of circumstances where women exist without power-- it is both horrifying and inspiring The author has developed both the storyline and the discussion /explanation of the social, political, and personal facets simultaneously, and for me, this puts in perspective Mayahs life and that of the many women that suffer like her. I highly recommend this book --it really gets to you.
