“Where can I go? How can I flee?” Escaping FGM. Mark your calendar: 26 April 2022, 7-8:30 Eastern

Here’s your chance to view Giselle Portenier’s prize-winning film about a Tanzanian project that spares girls from the blade and works to end FGM once and for all.

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I’ve seen In the Name of Your Daughter at least four times in various venues, including at Harvard and in London. Invited by Sarah Champion MP and Preet Gill MP, the cineaste Giselle Portenier introduced her film in the Jubilee Room of the House of Commons on 7 February 2019. Announcing the event as a “Parliamentary Screening of ‘Defying the Cutting Season’,” Westminster attracted prominent NGOs in the UK whose representatives were exhilarated by the visual history of a challenging and successful intervention. I highly recommend it. The April 26, 2022, online screening, hosted by Susan McLucas of Healthy Tomorrow and Sini Sanuman in Mali, includes a discussion afterward with ample time for Q & A.

Members of the audience in London, l to r, Dr. Phoebe Abe and Jennifer Obaseki, Solicitor, both anti-FGM activists.

When I first lectured on FGM in 2006 as a Visiting Scholar at Brandeis, Susan McLucas attended my presentation. I was then in the planning stage before launching UnCUT/VOICES Press which has enjoyed Susan’s total support since its founding. She notes about Portenier’s film: “In the Name of Your Daughter is inspiring and thoughtful and we would love your help letting people know about it.”

Nurse/midwife Comfort I. Ottah, former chair of FORWARD and a source of unwavering support over three decades. In the film Warrior Marks by Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar (1993), Comfort is shown demonstrating against a Brent Councillor’s proposal to legalize FGM in the UK.

The screening takes place on April 26 at 7 pm. You can sign up here: tinyurl.com/FGMfilm.

Here is the trailer to the film.

In London, l to r, author Hilary Burrage, filmmaker Giselle Portenier, and Tobe Levin von Gleichen (UnCUT/VOICES) with an unknown participant standing before a door labelled Members (of Parliament).

The first on the right, Susan McLucas attended a strategy session — on FGM as a Patriarchal Inscription on Women’s Bodies — at Harvard’s Hutchins Center on 12 December 2019.

Healthy Tomorrow is a local group that supports the work of Sini Sanuman, an NGO in Mali that fights FGM. You are cordially invited to contact Susan if you’d like to participate in her group’s activities to stop FGM. You can be assured of a hearty welcome.

Susan McLucas, Healthy Tomorrow

617-776-6524, cell: 617-501-9125

StopExcision.net

14 William St, Somerville, MA 02144