Bring Back Our Girls

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

By: Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw

Narrated by: Will Damron

Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

What happens after you click Tweet? The heart-stopping definitive account of the mission to rescue hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls whose abduction ignited a global social media campaign and a dramatic worldwide intervention.

In the spring of 2014, millions of Twitter users, including some of the world’s most famous people, unwittingly helped turn a group of 276 schoolgirls abducted by a little-known Islamist sect into a central prize in the global War on Terror by retweeting a call for their release: #BringBackOurGirls. With just four words, their tweets launched an army of would-be liberators. Soldiers and drones, spies, mercenaries, and glory hunters descended into an obscure conflict that few understood, in a remote part of Nigeria that had 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 one path offered them - converting to their captors' fundamentalist creed. In secret, they sang hymns and kept a diary, relying on their faith and friendships to stay alive.

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. A 21st-century story that plumbs the promise and peril of an era whose politics are fueled by the power of hashtag advocacy, this urgent and engrossing work of investigative journalism reveals the unpredictable interconnectedness of our butterfly-wings world, where a few days of online activism can bring years of offline consequences for people continents away.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Individual Faith magnified by many

The girls are the center of this book and yet demonstrate the interconnected world that make the 21st century unique yet shows the power of Ancient writings to steel the resolve of victims who prove unbreakable. The Swiss contribution hand in hand with the Nigerian locals also impress.

The story is profound and important

The book was more from a journalist perspective telling a news story, however interwoven was some more personal and intimate stories of the girls.

Fabulous book

This book was absolutely mind blowing! What a revelation! The impact of social media that is twitter (good or bad in this case) is astonishing but even more so the fact of just how little has been done for these girls some of whom have to this day not been accounted for…kuddos to the authors… please read for your own personal awareness!!!

Excellent book!

This book is perfect. It is detailed, well-researched, and nuanced. It probed how the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls helped and harmed the cause of the Chibok girls, helped elect Buhari, fractured BH, but also kept it alive. It's also incredibly moving, detailing the role of faith and grit in the girls' survival through all that time spent in captivity.

Highly engaging and amazingly researched

This work of journalistic nonfiction narrative is both highly engaging and amazingly researched. I felt that the writers had respect for both the subjects and the reader, leaving me with a lot think about...strength of faith, identity, storytelling, mediating and negotiations, the ripple effects of our actions in person and online. I was consistently impressed with the level of detail these writers gathered in their reporting, which brought me into each new setting and often within the hearts and minds of the women themselves. Each part of this incredible story brings to light the intricate facts of the capture, survival, and release of the Chibok girls, that were complicated by the hashtag efforts of social media. Yet, what I found most incredible were the stories of resistance and rebellion by the women and their resolve to hold onto their identity, even in the midst of incredible suffering.

Touching

This book was quite revealing of the ordeals of the girls and the many attempts to free them. Was social media good for their cause? It left me questioning the global campaign and campaigners that moved on as soon as some new fancy campaign showed up. Bravo to all the men and women who stumped and negotiated and the ones in the trenches.

Tragic and Heartrending!

So unfortunate! Cried a lot while listening! What type of people will do this? What government will condone this?

compelling and heartbreaking

what a story of the horrors of kidnappings in Nigeria but a compelling and insightful story of survival and a look into a world we know little about. Everyone should read or listen to it!