A review by bribeatris
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement

5.0

I couldn’t stop laughing while I was reading this sad story. I guess because in Mexico we are always mixing laughter with sadness. Something terrible could happen but a joke at the end is always said, and a laugh and some beer. What else is there? 

I had a dream about this book last night. I rarely dream about the books I read but I guess it was that real in my head or something. 

As I kept reading it got harder to laugh even though ladydi’s mom has a habit of making me laugh. But as the pages crept on it made me sick to my stomach. So many true stories like this one. They are just little girls most of the time, the stolen women. They are always just little girls, when they get raped and abused and taken from their home, when they burn cigarettes onto their skin, when they go to jail for crimes they did not commit or if they did for crimes they had no choice but to commit, they are always just little girls when they die too. 

My mom is also from a small town in the mountains of Mexico. They are not the same mountains from the story, in Guerrero that mothers dig holes for their daughters to hide in from the narcos but all of the mountains of Mexico are covered in narcos, like ants. Things are whispered about in silence but everything is always talked about, even what cannot be said, even what shouldn’t be said. 

I knew this story or a version of this story was true before I looked up interviews with Jennifer clement. I knew because there is always violence against women. The stories about violence against women is always true. Jennifer clement interviewed many women who were trafficked and doctors too and they all told her about these towns where the men have left and all there is left is each other, the dirt, the jungle and the fear of narcos coming to steal pretty girls. 

Read this book. This was beautiful and heartbreaking, engrossing and repulsive, poetry poetry poetry, eye opening and confirmation, sad and true. Sometimes it feels like no matter what country you’re in, it’s a crime to be born a woman.