Review: The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State by Nadia Murad
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

fascinating first person account of a brave Yazidi woman sexually enslaved to a series of Islamic State militants. in this ARC copy I enjoyed the clear three acts:
1. background including a summary of the unique and poetic Yazidi worldview
2. enslavement in a process that recalled holocaust horror
3. escape and reunion and owning her story

As I read this, I see Scotland, Castille possible limping toward an independence in a less bloody fashion, than say South Sudan or a fracturing Iraq-Syria. Reading this, the Yazidis are too small for independence, and apparently too different for protection from Kurds, Iraq, etc. In this era of apparent national identity resurgence, can the world protect its minority cultures, too?

Also, this feels like a cautionary tale like that of "First they came ...", the poem written by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. One variation goes:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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