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Melissa Chinchillo
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#BRING BACK OUR GIRLS

Drew Hinshaw Joe Parkinson

The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria’s Missing Schoolgirls

What happens after you click tweet? The heart-stopping and definitive account of the rescue mission to free hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls, and their heroic survival, after their 2014 kidnapping spurred a global social media campaign that prompted the intervention of seven militaries, showing us the blinding possibilities—for good and ill—of activism in our interconnected world.

In the spring of 2014, American celebrities and their Twitter followers unwittingly helped turn a group of teenagers into a central prize in the global War on Terror by retweeting #BringBackOurGirls, a call for the release of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls who’d been kidnapped by the little-known Islamist sect Boko Haram. With just four words, their tweets launched an army of would-be liberators, spies, and glory hunters into an obscure conflict that few understood, in a remote part of Nigeria that had just barely begun to use the internet.

When hostage talks and military intervention failed, the schoolgirls were forced to take survival into their own hands. As their days in captivity dragged into years, the young women learned to withstand hunger, disease, and torment, and became witnesses and victims of unspeakable brutality. Many of the girls were Christians who refused to take the path offered them—converting to Islam.

While the world’s most sophisticated surveillance technology sputtered out, a covert Swiss agency and its Nigerian recruits worked painstakingly in the shadows to free the girls. A powerful work of investigative journalism, Bring Back Our Girls unfolds across four continents, from the remote forests of northern Nigeria to the White House; from clandestine meetings in Khartoum safe houses to century-old luxury hotels on picturesque lakes in the Swiss Alps. It is a cautionary tale that plumbs the promise and peril of an era whose politics are fueled by the power of hashtag advocacy—revealing how wildfire social media activism is reshaping our relationship to global politics.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw are both Wall Street Journal Pulitzer-prize finalists who have covered Nigeria for more than a decade. Their 2017 narrative on the Chibok kidnapping is cited as the definitive account of what happened in Nigeria, based on unparalleled access to the surviving Chibok girls themselves, as well as the players who eventually won their freedom.

Available products
Book

Published 2021-03-01 by HarperCollins

Book

Published 2021-03-01 by HarperCollins

Book

Published 2021-03-01 by HarperCollins

Comments

“Everyone should read the testimonies of the Chibok girls who survived the capture. We need to help with efforts to liberate all of them and become more responsible for women and girls’ protection in conflicts.” -- Malala Yousafzai


"It's a really fascinating read, gripping as it's certainly been described, and the humanity of the girls that's brought to bear is really interesting, really, really interesting . . . It is really a remarkable story. It is an amazing story." -- Christiane Amanpour


"Phew. It is fascinating and gripping." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu


"This intimate and riveting account demonstrates the power of sustained international pressure in the name of human rights. Most importantly, it serves as a testament to the strength of the Chibok girls who resisted their captors and bravely asserted their humanity in the face of violent subjugation." -- Nadia Murad, recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize 


“This account of the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls and their courage and fortitude through the unspeakable brutality of their captivity is a nail-biter about survival told with Hitchcockian flair. Packed with their personal testimonies, along with fresh details of the hunt for them by a team of Swiss negotiators, Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw have written a work of brilliant journalism.” -- Lesley Stahl, correspondent, 60 Minutes


Bring Back Our Girls is a journalistic masterclass: a detailed and compelling story of the unsung heroes who won the release of Nigeria’s schoolgirls after the social media circus had moved on.” -- Tom Wright, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Billion Dollar Whale


"With this book, Parkinson and Hinshaw remind us why tenacious investigative journalism—and not reporting triggered by Twitteris so essential to democracy. It's a most readable recounting of the immense passion and years of painstaking work that it took to return these kidnapped young girls to their mothers." -- Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter


"Dramatic and detailed . . . This is a brilliant work of investigative journalism that supplies all the missing puzzle pieces, uncovering for the first time intimate and crucial details about the girls' time in Sambisa forest, and the brave men and women in Abuja and around the world who sacrificed so much to bring them back to their parents." -- Helon Habila, Commonwealth Writers Prize and Caine Prize winning novelist


Op-ed in the New York Times 


"In light of the proliferation of hashtag activism by individuals and corporations following the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, this exploration of the unintended impact of social media activism is both poignant and relevant." -- Kirkus Reviews


“A riveting chronicle of the 2014 kidnapping of a group of Nigerian schoolgirls by the terrorist group Boko Haram . . . . Written with compassion and insight, this deeply investigated account brings renewed attention to an ongoing tragedy.” -- Publishers Weekly


"Using diaries kept, at great risk, by two of the girls, [Parkinson and Hinshaw] offer insight into the incredible courage and faith the captives maintained while they endured more than three years of captivity. . . . Readers wishing to learn more about the Chibok girls beyond headlines and viral hashtags, as well as those looking for a better understanding of international relations, will be rewarded in this moving book." -- Library Journal


"Illuminating . . . remarkable and humanizing." -- Financial Times


"A brilliant investigation." -- Sunday Times (London)


"What the influencers who endorsed #BringBackOurGirls might do, though, is encourage their followers to read this finely written, absorbing book. Not only does it chart how the celebrity Twittersphere impacted one of the poorest corners of the planet, it does the far knottier reporting job of revealing what went on backstage, be it in the Nigerian and US governments, or the minds of Boko Haram commanders." -- Telegraph (UK)


"It is difficult to imagine a more thorough and significant piece of reportage, for our troubled world, than this new book." -- The Scotsman (Scotland)


"Bring Back Our Girls has a cinematic quality to it, and sometimes feels like it was written in the mold of a Hollywood script. There is no doubt that it has all the elements of a powerful film, and at times I had to put the book down to remind myself that the events I was reading were indeed real." -- Tablet magazine

https://www.politics-prose.com/video/bring-back-our-girls-joe-parkinson-and-drew-hinshaw

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/contributors/2021/03/03/kidnapping-becoming-growing-problem-and-economy-nigeria-column/6888121002/

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/how-michelle-obama-joined-a-global-campaign-to-bring-back-our-girls

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/africa/nigeria-schools-kidnappings.html

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-bring-back-our-girls-tweets-changed-a-war-in-nigeria-11613797261