This is a clarion call to unleash the human potential that is enslaved, killed and tortured simply because that potential belongs to a girl or woman. Certainly the emancipation of women is just and right. But the authors make a convincing case that it is also the key to economic development, because women are the world's single greatest untapped resource. They skewer "oh, but honor killing/genital cutting/enslavement is a cultural imperative" twaddle by pointing out that if that mindset had been applied to China, one of the authors of this book "would be stumbling along on three-inch feet." For the mother of a daughter, this book was nothing less than electrifying.
CALL ME OKAASAN: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering, by Suzanne Kamata. Wyatt-MacKenzie, 208 pp., $16 (paper)