Kirkus says about Daughter of the Leopard, "GET IT". :D See their review here.
"An immersive and informative memoir of a girlhood in Samburu County." -Kirkus Reviews
Full review:
Leparleen and Hendricks document a life caught between cultures in this debut memoir, the first in a series.
Leparleen is a Samburu, a member of the quasi-nomadic, Maa-speaking people who live on the lush highland rim of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. She grew up in the 1970s and 1980s during an era of transformation in Samburu society, a time when, in the words of co-author Hendricks, “the hammer hit the anvil: when great change came for a culture that had long been seen as, and indeed regarded itself as, unchangeable.” Leparleen’s father was the first in his clan to receive a modern education, which he parlayed into a position of local wealth and power. Because of this, his daughters, including the free-spirited and headstrong Leparleen, were sent to school in addition to learning the traditional ways of their people. (“Born with the word ‘why’ in your mouth,” Leparleen’s father said of her when she was a girl. “You’re destined for a beating in this culture.”) Leparleen documents her coming-of-age, which occurred quite early in a culture in which prepubescent sex, forced marriage, and female circumcision are common. In the years covered here, Leparleen’s most pressing problems were an abusive mother, debilitating sickness, and run-ins with Sudanese raiders. The memoir is composed in the third person, which presents Leparleen’s life—and life in her village—in frank, often humorous prose: “It is not possible to adequately describe the role of fashion in Samburu life: it is also not possible to fully illustrate the depth of their relationship with their cattle.” The reader learns much about the “butterfly people,” as the colorfully dressed Samburu are known, as well as the environment inside the traditional Samburu home, the manyatta. Leparleen’s father, who pops in and out of the narrative between “flings” with cars and his studies in America, provides a window into the wider world. Readers will no doubt anxiously await the next volume of Leparleen’s story.
An immersive and informative memoir of a girlhood in Samburu County.