I Dare to Say: African Women Share Their Stories of Hope and Survival

A young woman— rejected because of her difficult birth as the second-born twin—at last finds love, only to have her baby and husband die, then learn that that he was married, had eight children, and died of "the disease," or AIDS.

            A girl describes hiding under a blanket in her school dormitory while the Lord's Resistance Army, in search of child brides, pounds clubs on the steel door to gain entry and take their pick of the terrified girls.

            A woman tells how giving birth to a girl is a curse and how, as the last of eight daughters, she eagerly left her childhood home for marriage only to be rejected in favor of a co-wife and barred from her own home.

            These are the real-life experiences of contemporary African women, telling their stories through FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers Association. For centuries denied a voice by their culture, in I Dare to Say they break down all barriers, speaking out for the first time in their own words, sharing poignant tales of abuse, womanhood robbed, survival, and their dreams for themselves and their children. Dramatic, sometimes heartbreaking, often inspiring, I Dare to Say is the first book to truly show what it means to be a twenty-first-century African woman.