The Girl with the Louding Voice

Adunni's mother, her strongest advocate—the one who scraped together the money to send Adunni to school—is dead, and now her father sells her to an older man as the man's third wife for a bride price that will feed and house her father and her brothers. Adunni is fourteen.

How does that sound? If you feel compelled to read it, then I say to you, Skip the rest of this review and go listen to the audio of this book. Maybe also get a copy of the book so you can read for yourself once you get into the rhythm of Adunni's dialect.

Here are a few parts that struck me with their beauty:

“‘My mama says education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice,' I say. ‘I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking.'”

“My eyes was just watching myself, watching as the picture of schooling that I put on top a table in my heart was falling to the floor and scattering into small, small pieces.”

Adunni makes a friend who tells her, “God has given you all you need to be great, and it sits right there inside of you...Right inside your mind, in your heart... That you are a person of value. That you are important.”

I loved this book. I love Adunni's louding voice. I watched her as she entered a room and heard her before she even opened her mouth to be speaking.