In June 2002, Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman from the impoverished village of Meerwala, was gang raped by a local clan known as the Mastoi -- punishment for indiscretions allegedly committed by the woman's brother. While certainly not the first account of a female body being negotiated for honor in a family, this time the survivor had bravely chosen to fight back. In doing so, Mai single-handedly changed the feminist movement in Pakistan, one of the world's most adverse climates for women.

By July 2002, the Pakistani government awarded her the equivalent of 8,500 U.S. dollars in compensation money and sentenced her attackers to death -- and Mukhtar Mai went on to open a school for girls so that future generations would not suffer, as she had, from illiteracy.

In this rousing account, Mai describes her experience and how she has since become an agent for change and a beacon of hope for oppressed women around the world. Timely and topical, "In the Name of Honor" is the remarkable and inspirational memoir of a woman who fought and triumphed against exceptional odds.

Blood Stains, a best-seller in France, is a Diaspora memoir about growing up in a traditional family in Senegal and emigration to Paris. Its feisty protagonist, Khady, suffers genital mutilation at age seven, a brutal rite that entails lifelong distress, sexual trauma and harrowing childbirths. Married off at thirteen to a man two decades older, the teenager bears five children, and, as a battered wife, blows the whistle on an immigrant community that serves men's interests. Not content to remain a victim, however, the young woman fights for education, earns an independent living and becomes an activist. Her courageous battle against FGM as founder and president of the European Network brings her to the U.N. to urge international support.