{"id":564,"date":"2025-06-03T02:03:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T02:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/?p=564"},"modified":"2025-06-03T02:03:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T02:03:28","slug":"our-super-kirkus-review-is-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/?p=564","title":{"rendered":"Our (super) Kirkus Review is live"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Kirkus says about Daughter of the Leopard, \"GET IT<\/strong>\". :D See their review here<\/a>.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"An immersive and informative memoir of a girlhood in Samburu County.\" -Kirkus Reviews<\/strong><\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Full review:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
Leparleen and Hendricks document a life caught between cultures in this debut memoir, the first in a series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leparleen is a Samburu, a member of the quasi-nomadic, Maa-speaking people who live on the lush highland rim of Kenya\u2019s 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, \u201cthe hammer hit the anvil: when great change came for a culture that had long been seen as, and indeed regarded itself as, unchangeable.\u201d Leparleen\u2019s 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. (\u201cBorn with the word \u2018why\u2019 in your mouth,\u201d Leparleen\u2019s father said of her when she was a girl. \u201cYou\u2019re destined for a beating in this culture.\u201d) 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\u2019s 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\u2019s life\u2014and life in her village\u2014in frank, often humorous prose: \u201cIt 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.\u201d The reader learns much about the \u201cbutterfly people,\u201d as the colorfully dressed Samburu are known, as well as the environment inside the traditional Samburu home, the manyatta. Leparleen\u2019s father, who pops in and out of the narrative between \u201cflings\u201d 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\u2019s story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An immersive and informative memoir of a girlhood in Samburu County.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kirkus says about Daughter of the Leopard, “GET IT”. \ud83d\ude00 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}