Nujood- A Girl Wise Beyond Her Years?

I recently purchased a book titled I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced, which I found on a “Books That Make You Think” table at Barnes and Noble. I have now finished it and realize that this class is helping me to view it in an entirely different light. After spending countless hours in and out of class attempting to dissect the truth in the novels we read, it has become second-nature to look for the line that separates truth from lies. I’m starting to understand why the two will never be able to be separated and how sometimes this line is not meant to be found. Kurt Vonnegut begged and seduced us to search for this line in an attempt to make us understand his view on the obsessive need of man to find a purpose behind everything. Tim O’Brien teased us with this line, keeping it just out of our reach, to make us understand why finding the line isn’t necessary. Nonetheless, as I read Nujood’s ‘true’ story, I find myself still searching for the line, but simultaneously wondering if I need to find it.

I guess what bothers me the most is that the book is supposed to be told by Nujood, a ten year old girl from Yemen who was married off to a man three times her age, beaten, and sexually abused before she ran away to ask for a divorce. The book is sold as a memoir being told by this young girl, in a first person narrative, and then written down by Delphine Minoui. Nujood has never received a proper education, she was pulled from school in order to marry her husband after learning only to write her name. Yet the story is told in the voice of an educated adult. It is obvious that the writer tried to ‘authenticate’ the story by writing in a voice that may be used by a young girl, but the ideas she voices are those far beyond the intellect of a child. The narrator speaks of the implications of religious, social and cultural norms as a way to spread awareness to the reader and anyone else who may hear Nujood’s story through other means. The inferences made by the narrator cannot possibly originate in the mind of a ten year old girl who cannot read or write, has half a year’s worth of education, and no access to a television where she can view the news. This forces me, as a reader and analyst, to separate Nujood the person from Nujood the narrator, just as we did with Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried. As a result, I must also question the truth in her story and wonder how much of it originated in the mind of Nujood the girl, and how much was the exaggeration or commentary of Delphine Minoui, interposed and made to look like the story of Nujood.