Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jan 14, 2013 Linda C rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir-biography, non-fiction, cultural, africa

Leymah Gbowee graduated from a private high school at 17 and entered a public college with hopes of becoming a pediatrician. However, within months Liberia was in the middle of a major war with multiple rebel groups fighting the Doe government. Charles Taylor was one of the major rebel leaders and most brutal. The story follows Leymah’s life as she finds work with various social service groups, tries to continue her education, becomes involved in an abusive marriage and bears 4 successive childr Leymah Gbowee graduated from a private high school at 17 and entered a public college with hopes of becoming a pediatrician. However, within months Liberia was in the middle of a major war with multiple rebel groups fighting the Doe government. Charles Taylor was one of the major rebel leaders and most brutal. The story follows Leymah’s life as she finds work with various social service groups, tries to continue her education, becomes involved in an abusive marriage and bears 4 successive children and tries to keep her family safe and fed. The scenes and stories of the women living through war are horrific. Leymah works with various groups, learning multiple therapies and begins to get her own ideas about what will help women in war and create peace. She leaves her marriage and goes back to her parents’ home. She makes contacts with women all over her country and Africa absorbing knowledge like a sponge and creating networks. Using this knowledge she and a group of women create a peace network to stop the war. They use women Marches, sit-ins, other peaceful strategies including withholding sex to force the peace initiative. This was called the Mass Action.
At one point a peace negotiation is held in Accra, Ghana, but all the male representatives do are make claims of what they want and don’t negotiate. The go to expensive hotels and restaurants. They have no incentive to take the next step. Leymah, who has a contingent of women sitting in front of the conference building to be “their conscience”, gets the women to move around the conference room entrance, blocking the doors. Once the negotiators are inside, they say they cannot leave until peace is arranged. No more food or water will be allowed in to the conference. Negotiators will see what it is like to live as the women do during war. This alone did not bring peace but world attention and international peacekeepers and then peace.
The rest of the book covers building organizations to help recovery, survival and trauma relief. She becomes an international spokesperson for women and peace, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 for her efforts. Great story of empowerment.
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