Author: Shyima Hall
# of Pages: 232 (hardback)
Genre: YA, Memoir, Non-fiction
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt’s capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima’s servitude—but her journey to true freedom was far from over.
Review: While Shyima's story is a great one to learn of, it's presentation through this book degrades its quality.
I was hoping the writing wouldn't be as simplistic as it was....something that may have been fixed with better editing and writing help. She would also tend to repeat herself excessively. Due to the writing style, I couldn't sympathize with Shyima as much as I might have been able to.
In addition, most of the story was about her life AFTER slavery. It was very inspirational to read about how accomplished she became after escaping bondage, but I didn't think it was going to be a memoir of her whole life.
There was a lot left to desired. If you want to learn of Shyima, it would be much faster if you Googled her.
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