The title of this book stopped me. It holds within it the whole atrocious ordeal endured by an eleven-year-old girl from Sierra Leone. She tells her own story, in her own voice. Not to ask for pity, but to show us—with directness and simplicity—that even as a victim of amputation during the civil war, even as one among thousands, you can be reborn. You can walk with your head held high. You can claim, for yourself and your people, the dignity that is every human being's birthright. Don't say—as we so often do—"I can't read such horrors." It's too easy to look away, to remain outside what happens in our broken world. Opening your heart to the world of those unjustly tormented means learning not to flinch from drying the tears of those who suffer. It means following, with courage, the path Jesus taught us—the path we ought to walk all the way to the end. Because, as Mariatu teaches us, we believe in resurrection.
M.B., 2010