Word: shamed
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...What saves Shame from becoming another BBC documentary on the horrors of forced marriage (the network has interviewed Sanghera on that topic) is the author's own story, recounted deftly and without apology. Like all good heroes, she is deeply flawed and strongly conflicted. "By day I fought for the rights of Asian women," she writes, "and by night I craved acceptance from the very community I rejected...
...away from home, married someone of her choosing, raised three children, earned a university degree and braved death threats to launch an organization that helps women in Britain's South Asian community escape forced marriages. That's a success story to inspire anyone. But, as Sanghera writes in Shame, her affecting new memoir, she has never quite escaped the penumbra of her family. She has never fully recovered from their response when, shortly after running away, she phoned home offering to return. "Don't bother," her mother said. "In our eyes, you're dead...
...weight of family and community hangs over Shame like a doting parent. As Sanghera notes, nobody really knows how many young people in Britain are pressured into matches they don't want. The British government's Forced Marriage Unit deals with more than 250 cases a year, but Sanghera's group, Derby-based Karma Nirvana, alone takes on seven new ones a week. Police in Britain are investigating scores of suspected "honor killings" of women resisting arranged marriages. Tellingly, the suicide rate among young South Asian females is three times the national average...
...Sanghera is certainly no angel. Though underage, she flees Derby with her older, lower-caste boyfriend Jassey, to her family's shame. The young couple settles in nearby Leeds, where Jassey, a trained engineer, sells cheap watches in a market stall to support them. Sanghera rewards his good-humored steadiness with an adulterous affair and a divorce. Then she ditches her lover, finds another husband and leaves him as well, temporarily losing custody of a child...
...second largest economy is undeniably its most efficient wealthy energy user, burning barely more than half as much oil per capita as the U.S. does and producing half as much carbon per person. What's more, it's not just energy hogs like the U.S. that Japan puts to shame; it even beats stridently green countries like Germany. But while Japan takes its Kyoto Protocol commitments seriously, it's still likely to fall far short of those goals...