- Paperback: 400 pages
- Publisher: Harcourt Brace International; 1st Harvest Ed edition (31 Dec 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0156002140
- ISBN-13: 978-0156002141
- Product Dimensions: 22.7 x 17.6 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
1,241,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #52 in Books > Biography > Theatre & Performance Art > Circus
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In her best-selling 1992 novel, Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker opened a painful door: she brought the issue of female genital mutilation, a practice that affects one hundred million of the world's women, to the attention of the reading public. For many readers, this first encounter with a subject previously unfamiliar to them was shocking and unforgettable. Alice Walker decided early in the process of writing her novel that she had not yet done enough to help stop this age-old practice. She resolved to make a documentary film that would further educate people about the harmful, sometimes deadly process of removing the clitoris - and often the remaining outer genitalia - as a means of maintaining tradition and ensuring a woman's "cleanliness" and fidelity. To make the film, Alice Walker teamed up with Indian-British filmmaker Pratibha Parmar, whose credits include several widely acclaimed documentaries focusing on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. This book chronicles their odyssey together. Warrior Marks describes a unique filmmaking journey, from Alice Walker's first letter to Pratibha Parmar proposing the idea of the film to the many journal entries and observations each of them made along the way. From California to England to Senegal, The Gambia, and Burkina Faso, Warrior Marks follows Walker and Parmar as they interview people who are concerned with and affected by the practice of female genital mutilation. The text includes transcripts of their interviews, three new poems by Alice Walker, and over fifty photographs offering a vivid and poignant portrayal of the people and places they visited. For its insights into the collaborative creative process, as well as itsperceptions about the politics of filmmaking and the politics of feminism, Warrior Marks is an extraordinary volume. It is also the adventure of two remarkable women who together fulfilled a dream.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book catalogues the authors journey toward making a t.v documentory and is an informative source for anyone wishing to learn more about female circumcision. Included are interviews with circumcisors and those who have been circumcised. Once started I couldn't put this book down as I strove to learn more about the barbaric practice of circumcision. For those wondering why it is practiced the text offers an easy to read understanding and dispels some of the myths surrounding the said practice. Definatly not for the lighthearted, a sad, poignant and disturbing account.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
23 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Outstanding! Everyone should read this book
26 Jun 1998
Format:Hardcover
An incredibly intense book. It is not for the easily frightened. The modern-day atrocities detailed in this book overshadow anything Steven King might think up. YOU WILL NEVER FORGET WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THIS BOOK. I based my senior thesis on Walker's works, and Warrior Marks opens a window into her soul. I would recommend this book to all men and women, especially those who think the modern world is devoid of barbaric cruelty.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Takes you out of your comfort zone
3 Jan 2003
Format:Paperback
I first became aware of female genital mutilation (FGM) when reading "The Color Purple," and again when reading Fausiya Kassindja's "Do They Hear You When You Cry." These two books led me to read "Warrior Marks." Female genital mutilation is a crime, an outrage, a sin before God. How dare the originators of this heinous procedure presume that what God created is faulty or a mistake? "Warrior Marks" enhanced what I had already learned about FGM. Any man (or woman) who tries to uphold this procedure as something that benefits girls and women is of a criminal mind. There is no benefit to putting a woman through this torture. If men were required to experience a similar experience, we would soon see the end of FGM. Please read this book if you seek another point of view. The addition of Alice Walker's poetry and the sharing of her experiences as she and Pratibha Parmar traveled through Africa is an eye-opener, and the way the book is written gives the reader a personal view in the same way that Ms. Kassindja's book does. Ms. Walker gives the women that she writes about a certain dignity, and while the reader may not be able to identify with the physical pain, some of the emotions may be felt. This is definitely a 5-star book.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful
We African women need MORE books like this!!
20 Oct 2004
Format:Paperback
I am Kola Boof, often and truthfully billed as the nation of Sudan's top woman writer. I am also a woman who is "vaginally circumcised"--mutilated, if you will. In fact, Sudan is Africa's leading nation for "FMG" as Americans call it.
"Warrior Marks" is a superior work by a superior woman.
While so many reviewers here have claimed that there are BETTER books on this subject than Walker's "Warrior Marks"....I would remind them that with so very little written about this subject in the first place--we need to read and value EVERYTHING that is offered on the subject, especially when offered by a Black Woman (Alice Walker) whose obvious love, care and respect for African women...seeps like a healing oil from every page.
It's no secret that Alice Walker is one of the great inspirations of my own literary career and much of my work as an African woman from the Nilotic peoples of Sudan is distilled through the prism of her own American voice---as I struggled to find a way to tell my own stories with as much truth and bareness as possible.
"Warrior Marks" is a tribute to the WORTHINESS of African women...a book that gives us permission to embrace our sexuality, to value our black bodies and to insist that those bodies be healed. It also gives us the chance for "forgiveness". And through Alice Walker's willingness to lay bare her own personal reactions and observations and "empathies"....a larger story of womanhood is revealed and committed to word.
GOD bless both Alice and Pratibah, for such COURAGE.
"Warrior Marks" is a superior work by a superior woman.
While so many reviewers here have claimed that there are BETTER books on this subject than Walker's "Warrior Marks"....I would remind them that with so very little written about this subject in the first place--we need to read and value EVERYTHING that is offered on the subject, especially when offered by a Black Woman (Alice Walker) whose obvious love, care and respect for African women...seeps like a healing oil from every page.
It's no secret that Alice Walker is one of the great inspirations of my own literary career and much of my work as an African woman from the Nilotic peoples of Sudan is distilled through the prism of her own American voice---as I struggled to find a way to tell my own stories with as much truth and bareness as possible.
"Warrior Marks" is a tribute to the WORTHINESS of African women...a book that gives us permission to embrace our sexuality, to value our black bodies and to insist that those bodies be healed. It also gives us the chance for "forgiveness". And through Alice Walker's willingness to lay bare her own personal reactions and observations and "empathies"....a larger story of womanhood is revealed and committed to word.
GOD bless both Alice and Pratibah, for such COURAGE.
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