Because I Am a Girl

Seven writers, including Joanne Harris, Marie Phillips, and Irvine Welsh, spent time with a charity promoting the development of women and girls—and were inspired to write an extraordinary array of stories and essays that statistics cannot convey Irvine Welsh tells a story of prostitutes in the Dominican Republic, while Xiaolu Guo tells of a policeman with a Khmer Rouge past. Marie Phillips takes on the sexual abuse of Ugandan schoolgirls—and the outcome of the abuse. Seven authors have visited seven different countries—Brazil, Togo, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Uganda, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic—and spoken to young women and girls about their lives, struggles, and hopes. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings based on the girls' true stories, about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience, and changing attitudes.