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However Long the Night: Molly Melching's Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls Triumph by Aimee Molloy San Francisco, CA : HarperOne , 2013. Pp. xvii + 252, map, photographs. $14.99 (pbk).
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I hesitate to see it as teleological that so many of our works on female genital cutting have the end of it in sight. Perhaps it is how we attract the readers who keep asking, in surprise, 'Is that STILL going on?' Perhaps our writings give them hope that their concern is having an effect, helping to bend behaviour toward a norm that feels more comfortable for the global North and for human rights activists and reformers everywhere.
So, we see words like Hodzic's 'twilight' of cutting. Or Melching's comforting wisdom from Senegalese elder, Alaaji Mustaafa Njaay, 'However long the night, the sun will rise' (Molloy, p. 111). There's hope that things will change and young girls will no longer have to face the fear and pain of cutting.
These three books address that desire for hope by describing concrete situations where activists conceive of change as possible, work on change, and see slow results. Why change is resisted is a key focus in all of theseￂ -ￂ what are the impediments, the treasured traditions, and the functional benefits that reinforce continuity? And since change is happening everywhere, can we identify actions or correlates that accelerate the process of change, perhaps ones that could be used by activists elsewhere? And in the most telling analysis, Hodzic focuses on the 'problematisation' that occurs as NGOs that have mobilised campaigns against cutting become their own sort of phenomenon, setting in motion additional sorts of opposition to change. Although the rates are declining, the practices are far from ended, and yet the search for momentum is evident in all of these studies.
Of the three books, the smoothest readￂ -ￂ and most likely to be added to courses for undergraduatesￂ -ￂ is Aimee Molloy's However Long the Night, which is a portrait of Molly Melching and her work in Senegal. Based on Molloy's extensive visits and interviews with Melching in 2011-2012 (and with her daughter and a few others) and illustrated with family photos and pictures of her work and colleagues in...