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Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey Of A Desert Nomad Hardcover – August 19, 1998

by Waris Dirie (Author), Cathleen Miller (Author)

4.5 2,119 ratings

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"Waris's story is one of remarkable courage. From the deserts of Somalia to the world of high fashion, she battles against oppression and emerges a real champion. She is the most beautiful inspiration to anyone." —Elton John

Waris Dirie ran away from her oppressive life in the African desert when she was barely in her teens, illiterate and impoverished, with nothing to her name but a tattered shawl. She traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu—the first leg of a remarkable journey that would take her to London, where she worked as a house servant; then to nearly every corner of the globe as an internationally renowned fashion model; and ultimately to New York City, where she became a human rights ambassador for the U.N.

Poignant and powerfully told, Desert Flower is Waris's extraordinary story.

Print length

228 pages
Language

English
Publisher

William Morrow
Publication date

August 19, 1998
Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 10 inches
ISBN-10

0688158234
ISBN-13

978-0688158231
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

By age 6, Waris Dirie was herding her family's sheep and goats, fending off hyenas and wild dogs as the family carved a path through Africa. She was just twice that age when she ran off into the vast furnace of the Somali desert to escape an arranged marriage to a much older man. Traveling for days without food and water, she made her way to Mogadishu and later to London as a servant to her uncle, the Somalian ambassador. There she wrestled with culture shock and got her first taste of the modeling life that eventually brought her into the public eye. Dirie is resilient, having survived drought, hunger, and the ritual female genital mutilation that marks a step toward womanhood among some traditional Moslems but, argue critics, steals or ruins many girls' lives. "As we traveled throughout Somalia," says Dirie, "we met families and I played with their daughters. When we visited them again, the girls were missing. No one spoke the truth about their absence or even spoke of them at all." As a special ambassador to the United Nations, Dirie has spoken out loudly on this subject and championed environmental causes, too. How much of her sometimes breathless story is gospel truth and how much embellished is hard to say. Like Dirie herself, though, the combination is intriguing, powerful, and unique. --Francesca Coltrera

From Publishers Weekly

Joining the current rage for model memoirs (see review above) is Dirie, a native of Somalia, who has for more than a decade stalked the world's catwalks and appeared in numerous glossy magazines. This, however, is no fluff-job dictated into a tape recorder on transatlantic flights, then recomposed by a hired gun back in New York. Rather, it is a striking account of a personal odyssey that began in the Somali desert, where Dirie grew up without shoes, living amid nomadic tribes and tyrannized by patriarchal strictures. As a pubescent girl, Dirie was circumcised?a procedure described here in chilling detail?before escaping an arranged marriage to stay with an aunt in Mogadishu. Landing a job as a house servant in London, Dirie struggled to launch a modeling career while dodging British immigration authorities and the dreadful results of marriages of convenience. At the end of this affecting and at times very entertaining book, Dirie's metamorphosis from desert nomad into jetsetting nomad culminates in a post as a human rights ambassador to the UN, where, these days, Dirie campaigns for the eradication of female circumcision and women's rights around the globe. It's easy to forget that Dirie's memoir is a book about someone whose success has come from posing for the camera. Indeed, it is Dirie's remarkable lack of narcissism or entitlement that makes her so captivating a raconteur. Photos. Editor: Billy Kelly; agent: Christie Fletcher/Carol Mann Agency; author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Foreign rights have sold in 10 countries.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As a special ambassador to the United Nations, Somalian supermodel Dirie speaks out against the custom of genital mutilation, a "barbaric rite" that she underwent at age five. In this memoir, she "provides a fascinating glimpse of her separate lives?camel herder, supermodel, human rights activist?and manages to weave threads of drama, humor, and courage into each."
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Dirie's beauty led her to a career as a fashion model; her experience as a young girl subjected to circumcision led her to speak out against the practice and eventually become a human rights ambassador to the United Nations. In this book, Dirie describes her journey from her childhood in a traditional family of desert nomads in Somalia. When her father attempts to arrange for 12-year-old Dirie to marry an old man, the strong-willed girl flees her family and her culture's stifling traditions for women. She runs away to Mogadishu and eventually gets a job as a maid for an uncle who is the Somalian ambassador to England. When the uncle returns to Somalia, Dirie stays in London and begins a career as a model. The most compelling portions of Dirie's story are her graphic portrayals of the practice of female genital mutilation and the impact it has on women who long to control their bodies and their lives. Vanessa Bush

From Kirkus Reviews

The tale of a courageous woman's struggles to come to terms with her Somali childhood, including her experience of female genital mutilation (FGM). Dirie ran away from home at age 13 to escape from an arranged marriage to a 60-year-old man. By age five, however, she had been introduced to FGM, the practice that would ensure her marriageability (and thus her marketability) in Somali culture. While Diries beloved mother held her down, a local gypsy woman used a dirty razor blade to scrape away at Diries external sexual organs and then sewed her up again, leaving only tiny holes to allow for urination and menstruation to occur in a compromised fashion. After fleeing her family, Dirie worked as a housemaid for a well-placed uncle in London, where she was discovered as a model and embarked on a successful career in fashion. She then underwent surgery to unstitch her vagina (in an unforgettable detail, she explains how amazing it felt to urinate in less than ten minutes and menstruate in less than ten days). More recently shes become an international UN ambassador on the issue of FGM after sharing her personal story with the magazine Marie Claire and on 20/20. And indeed, the issue could hardly have won a better spokeswoman. Her book offers extraordinary firsthand insight into FGM, thought to be performed now on more than two million girls a year. It is also a well-told and truly engaging autobiography with an old-fashioned, Algeresque appeal: obscure African camel-tender becomes internationally admired (and vindicated) high-life heroine. On all counts, an outstandingly dramatic and moving tale. (8 pages color photos, not seen) (Film rights to Rocket Films, UK; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author

An internationally recognized supermodel, Waris Dirie is a United Nations special ambassador who travels the world as an articulate and passionate advocate of human rights. She served as United Nations special ambassador for the elimination of FGM. She has since established the Desert Flower Foundation to advance women’s rights in Africa.

Cathleen Miller circled the globe to interview sources for her latest book, Champion of Choice, the biography of UN leader Nafis Sadik. Her previous work includes the international bestseller Desert Flower, which was adapted as a feature film. Miller’s travel essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ William Morrow; First Edition (August 19, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 228 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0688158234
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0688158231
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 10 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,985,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9,448 in Political Leader Biographies
- #20,672 in Women's Biographies
- #56,642 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.5 2,119 ratings

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Cathleen Miller
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An American by birth, Cathleen Miller has traveled around the globe to write her books telling the stories of people and places. She has interviewed diplomats and heads of state on five continents, patients in an Addis Ababa hospital, rape camp survivors in Kosovo, and midwives in the mountains of East Timor. Her work sometimes places her in strange circumstances, for example cruising St. Petersburg in a Winnebago to interview prostitutes, and running down a Brazilian mountain at midnight fleeing bandits. Cathy’s biography of Nafis Sadik, Champion of Choice, is the result of ten years of work and many, many strange circumstances.
Cathy’s previous work includes the international bestseller Desert Flower, which has been translated into 55 languages and adapted as a feature film shown around the globe. In both Desert Flower and Champion of Choice, Cathy utilizes storytelling as a rhetorical device to demonstrate how the issues which affect one individual are representative of a larger world order. The personal is political.
Cathy is also the author of a memoir about her life in rural Pennsylvania, The Birdhouse Chronicles, a book first written as her master’s thesis while she attended Penn State’s MFA program in creative writing. Birdhouse received a Pushcart Prize nomination.
A winner of the Society of American Travel Writers gold award, Cathy’s travel essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times. They are included in the collection Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel.
Cathleen Miller taught creative writing at San José State University, where today she is an emeritus professor. She’s an accomplished public speaker who has performed at numerous venues, including Cinequest, LitQuake, the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Foundation, the Women, Peace and Conflict Lecture and Film Series, and the American Women’s Association of Rome. She’s also featured in a Ted Talk on a topic dear to her heart: “How to Raise Your Daughter to Become a World Leader.”
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ChristopherReview

A Story of The Amazing Possibilities of Life

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2011

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NOTE: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Desert Flower is the inspiring life story of Waris Dirie's transformation from Somali desert nomad to international supermodel.

The story begins with Waris' pastoralist childhood in the Somali desert, where she lives with her family. During this time, she is voluntarily circumcised, an event which greatly impacts the rest of her life. She eventually flees her desert life, when her father attempts to arrange an undesirable marriage. She lives with family in Mogadishu, before deciding to live with her uncle, an ambassador, in London.

For the next four years, Waris lives as a maid in London, where she is spotted by a modeling scout. Unfortunately, she needs a passport and enters a sham marriage to acquire one. Her marriage becomes abusive, and she moves to New York to pursue her modeling career. She becomes the subject of a BBC documentary, allowing her to briefly re-unite with her mother. She meets her future husband and becomes a special ambassador for the UN, speaking out against female circumcision. Finally, she becomes pregnant, frees herself from the abusive marriage, and has her first child.

Dirie's memoir is fast-paced and easy to read. It explores the vast cultural divide between a Western international supermodel and a Somali desert nomad, while remaining relatable and understandable to the average reader. It is an inspirational story, as Dirie goes against the odds and achieves the unexpected in life.

One of the major themes of the memoir is violence against women. From early childhood, Dirie is the victim of rape and genital mutilation. She takes control of her life and flees the desert when her father tries to seal her fate in a hopeless marriage, but even outside of the desert, Dirie faces sexual assault and the ever-present burdens of being a Somali woman. Even when she reaches the Western world, she is still reliant on men in order to get her passport, forcing her to put up with theft and abuse.

This theme of violence against women compliments another major theme, which is the individual working within detrimental political and economic structures. Whether she's working for below minimum wage at McDonalds or trying to get a passport to work internationally or not being able to return to Somalia due to warfare and political instability, Dirie must navigate these oppressive structures, and she always comes out on top. She does not allow the world to oppress her, continually seeking out better realities.

Despite such violence in her life, Dirie does not remain a victim. She constantly pushes forward despite the unknown and achieves her goals in life. She has surgery to alleviate the complications of her circumcision, and works with the U.N. to speak out against the practice. She starts a family with a man that she loves and never forgets where she came from. Desert Flower is a must-read memoir for anyone hoping to better grasp the diversity and possibilities of life.

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V. Lichac

Character contradictions.....

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2011

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Her beauty and her stated sense of love for grace, peace, joy, and dignity seem to conflict with how she expresses herself. Boy, does she have a mouth on her and the way she expresses herself seems to belie a beguiling outward appearance!! I mean did she use the F and the S words so robustly in her native Somali language? One wonders!

To be sure her telling of family life in Somalia, her flight to avoid an unwanted marriage, her trials and tribulations while trying to avoid death and destruction are poignant, admirable accounts that made one cringe learning of the intimate horrors of female genital mutilation. Her innocence, puzzlement, and eventual mingling into a fast-paced, high tech society had me laughing and cheering her brave attempts to acclimate to whatever good and bad things came her way. Her modeling career success is amazing, but, then she is a stunning looking woman.

As an aside, I realized once I finished reading "Desert Flower" and seeing some of the photos of Waris that I may have used one of her modeling shots to create an oil painting I did many years ago. Until I read her book, I had never heard of her. Anyway, I was very taken with a woman in a photo I found in a magazine. I named the piece "Woman of Zanzibar" though there was no reference in the photo as to where the woman's photo was taken. I guess I wasn't too far off the beaten track as Zanzibar is just south of Somalia on the east coast of Africa. The title just seemed so right!

I have to agree with other reviewers that approximately the last half of "Desert Flower" seems to be much less rich in narrative and becomes seemingly shallow and often hurtful to those around her with screaming tirades like "I'll kill you!", "I hate you" and other strident confrontations. I guess you could say she is just picking up on a "western" persona and has left behind a sense of serenity and calm she experienced growing up. But that in itself is a contradiction. She clearly negates her culture's embrace of female genital mutilation a practice she attributes to "the ego, selfishness, and aggression of men"!
She scolds westerners for being artificial, lacking family values, rushing around trying to get more money and things, being obsessed with weight loss and perceives western society to be unappreciative of its many wonderful freedoms and wealth. I do think that is true of many Americans but I don't think is by any means the majority. She does say, however, "I am grateful that I've experienced both lives." I know she means well by the comparison of the two cultures she's been a part of, but some of her remarks do seem a little condescending. That is since we "westerners" haven't experienced the horrors and struggles she has endured, we are somewhat lacking an understanding of what is profoundly precious in life. But, bless her heart, anyway! I hope in her further writings she'll clean up her words and speak with more dignity and less raucous discourse.

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Joan

Well worth read!

Reviewed in Canada on July 12, 2023

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This book really opens your eyes to the brutality of female circumcision. It is a hard read but well worth leaning of the horrific torture young girls go through because of tribal ceremonies. It definitely needs to be stopped. The author is outstanding in her quest to bring this story to help end this terrible practice.

J. S

Stunning autobiography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2023

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A very interesting read which changed my thinking.

Elena

Aprender algo que desconocía

Reviewed in Spain on June 7, 2023

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Leyendo el libro coges cariño a Waris por su fortaleza. Luchó para llegar lejos pero lo consiguió y eso me gusta. Gracias por contar tu historia. ;)

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Ann C

Courageous and transformative for anyone who reads it

Reviewed in India on March 19, 2023

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Awareness is essential for change. The author, Waris Dirie’s courage, in life and by telling her story, will prove transformative to many all over the world.

Carlo

Coinvolgente

Reviewed in Italy on October 27, 2019

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Coinvolgente ed emozionante. Storia ben scritta che ti porta a vivere e condividere gli scenari che fanno da sfondo alla vita della protagonista. Ben fatto, equilibrato, forte nella denuncia, delicato nel far prevalere i sentimenti su tutto e nonostante tutto.

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