Unregistered

“Unregistered” is an outpour of pain and suffering, wordlessly endured by a girl whose life has been stolen by sexual abuse. “Unregistered” is a story of a girl whose childhood is lost forever anywhere and everywhere in the world.

The book tells the stories of three different girls, bringing into focus our societies, family and cultural traditions that are shamefully covering up child abuse.

Since the age of seven, Taniasha, whose birth is not registered just like that of many other Amerindian children in Guyana, is sold by her father for sex with seasonal gold miners. Her motherless childhood is a torturous existence, void of happy dreams or any thought for that matter. Her attempted escape ends up badly with her little brother, Roy, being sold instead. Roy contracts AIDS and is taken away by his grandmother. She takes the dying boy on a long journey to the legendary Kaieteur waterfalls to ask the Great Spirit for a better life for Taniasha, who has just given birth.

Meanwhile, in Bulgaria, home to the oldest semi-nomadic tribe of Kalaidzhi Gypsy, Dana’s father defies orthodox traditions and encourages his daughter to finish high school and continue her studies. But seeing her father sinking deep in debt, the beautiful Dana decides to give in to what she thinks is a shameful tradition of being displayed at a bride’s market.

In any other country, the highly intellectual father of Ninon commits suicide under the pressure of lack of inspiration for the word of poetry, and his wife’s drinking problem. Nina, his wife, remarries when Ninon is five. She continues drinking and partying, unaware that her husband sexually abuses Ninon.

The three beautiful young souls are trapped in the voiceless, thoughtless, dumb feeling of submissiveness. The three young girls silently endure pain and cope with shame and fear all on their own. Their brutally wounded lives will never be healed.