Hidden Girl

The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave

232 pages

English language

Published Jan. 8, 2014

ISBN:
978-1-4424-8168-8
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
842322956

View on OpenLibrary

3 stars (1 review)

This biography traces the life of Shyima Hall, a domestic slave smuggled from Egypt to Orange County by the family her parents sold her to at age eight. The coauthor is Lisa Wysocky.

The author, Shyima Hall was eight when her parents sold her into slavery. In Egypt's capitol city of Cairo, she lived with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyimas' servitude-- but her journey to true freedom was far from over. Now a US citizen, she regularly speaks out about human trafficking and candidly reveals how she overcame her harrowing circumstances.

1 edition

A mixture of elements.

3 stars

This book is pretty good for younger readers, so I would recommend it to middle school teachers who want to introduce these subjects to their students. This is especially true if you're looking for something that talks about relatively recent events, as this woman was born in 1989 and was put into bondage in later childhood.

The good: The writing is relatively simple and expresses a lot of complex ideas. It chronicles a lot of emotions and, for a good chunk of the book, is written rather coherently. It's brutally honest and very open, which I definitely appreciate.

The bad: The worst thing about this is some of the writing toward the end. The book uses phrases like "until a few months ago," which is confusing because I'm reading this in 2017 (and it was published in 2014). There are a few other times where whoever proofread it failed to …

Subjects

  • Foster parents
  • Child abuse
  • Juvenile literature
  • Child slaves