“I Kick And I Fly” – A Story About The Courage Of A Girl, By Ruchira Gupta
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The strapline on the cover of this book tells us much about its message: ‘When the world is against you… fight back!’ I Kick and I Fly is the tale of fourteen-year-old Heera, living in a grimly impoverished red light district in India, and about to be sold into the sex trade by her father, to pay the family’s debts.
But Heera has other ideas, bolstered by a chance opportunity to learn Kung Fu. Then her best friend goes missing, and Heera embarks on a daring rescue mission…
Ruchira Gupta, a journalist and activist, is a powerful advocate for feminist strength. To quote no less an authority than Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, ‘Any work from Ruchira Gupta is sure to further the cause of liberating women.’
In this story of a fast-moving adventure we learn about a part of the world unknown to many, a world where it takes determination, ingenuity and courage to secure a way out.
The writer, my colleague and friend Ruchira Gupta, has pioneered laws, policies, protocols, conventions and Best Practice approaches in the Feminist Abolitionist struggle against sex-trafficking in the UN, globally and India. Her work will be archived at Stanford Library and will be open access for students across the world to study. Her journey began as a journalist, when she made the Emmy-winning documentary, The Selling of Innocents, a 1997 documentary on sex-trafficking from Nepal to Mumbai, India.
With the help of this documentary, Ruchira testified to the US Senate for the passage of the first Trafficking Victim Protection Act and to the UN for the passage of the UN Protocol to End Trafficking in Persons. She founded the Indian anti-sex trafficking organization Apne Aap Women Worldwide.
As a social justice activist, feminist campaigner, Emmy Award–winning journalist and professor at New York University, Ruchira Gupta has dedicated her life to creating a world where no child is bought or sold. I Kick and I Fly is her first novel for teens, young adults and anyone seeking to understand sex trafficking, published in 2023 by Rock the Boat.
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Books by Hilary Burrage on female genital mutilation
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6684-2740
A free internet version of the book Female Mutilation is available here. It is hoped that putting these many global narrations onto the internet will enable people to read them in whatever language they choose.
Hilary has published widely and has contributed two chapters to Routledge International Handbooks:
Female Genital Mutilation and Genital Surgeries: Chapter 33,
in Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (2019),
eds Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz
and
FGM Studies: Economics, Public Health, and Societal Well-Being: Chapter 12,
in The Routledge International Handbook on Harmful Cultural Practices (2023),
eds Maria Jaschok, U. H. Ruhina Jesmin, Tobe Levin von Gleichen, Comfort Momoh
Hilary Burrage 