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    Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave
    Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave
    Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave
    Audiobook6 hours

    Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave

    Written by Shyima Hall and Lisa Wysocky

    Narrated by Robin Eller

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt's capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude-but her journey to true freedom was far from over.

    A volunteer at her local police department since she was a teenager, Shyima is passionate about helping to rescue others who are in bondage. Now a U.S. citizen, she regularly speaks out about human trafficking and intends to one day become an immigration officer. In Hidden Girl, Shyima candidly reveals how she overcame her harrowing circumstances and brings vital awareness to a timely and relevant topic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 25, 2014
    ISBN9781494573508

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    Reviews for Hidden Girl

    4/5

    33 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I remember reading about Shyima Hall in the news: a girl kept as a family slave, literally right under everyone’s nose. It’s one thing to hear about such things happening. It’s quite another to have it so close to home. (She was in Irvine in Orange County. I was living in Tustin, an adjacent city, during the time.) Some years later, when I heard about her memoir, Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave (Simon & Schuster, 2014), I was eager to have a chance to read her side of the story.The book begins with Shyima’s younger years in Egypt, her family plagued with financial difficulties. While the author doesn’t excuse her parents handing her over to work for another family, the book does show the reader why they probably felt they had no other choice. Kept as a slave, eight-year-old Shyima tolerated substandard living arrangements, received no education, and had no time for herself. It was work day and night. She kept track of time passed by the birthdays of her owners’ children.When her owners decided to move to the United States, they went to a lot of trouble to make sure Shyima joined them. Shyima’s life of slavery continued over here, until someone dropped an anonymous tip about the suspicious girl to the police. Now free, Shyima’s struggles didn’t end. She faced court trials, foster family drama, and the struggle of trying to find her place in a very different culture. But in the end, you can see that she’s happy and optimistic about life and eager to educate the American public about the modern-day slave trafficking problem.Hidden Girl is a great book, taking its reader through a whole range of emotions. Cowriter Lisa Wysocky did an excellent job keeping a very foreign and little girlish voice to the narrative. And it was encouraging for me to learn that the Orangewood Children’s Home (with which my old church had been involved) played a positive role in helping her. The book is good evidence that – even though there’s a lot of social and economic issues abroad – there are real problems here at home that need our attention too.
    • 4/5
      Shyima Hall was eight years old when her parents sold her into slavery. Before this, she lived with them and her ten siblings in poverty in a small town near Alexandria, Egypt. She worked 18 to 20 hours a day for her captors, receiving no compensation, medical care or schooling. When her owners moved to the United States, Shyima was illegally transported to California, where she lived in a garage and was forbidden to have outside contacts. This memoir follows her experiences from her early childhood and captivity to her life after she was rescued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. An engrossing, moving memoir of modern domestic slavery that fortunately ends on a hopeful note.
    • 3/5
      Eight year old Shyima is sold into slavery in Egypt, and transported to California by her ‘owners’ who isolate her using verbal abuse, deprivation, and by insuring she never learns English. Eventually rescued in 2002, she survives the trial, readjusts to life as a free person and embarks on a mission to help others. Not really well written, infuriating, frustrating, but also very interesting, and important.
    • 3/5
      The story of a girl who was sold into slavery by her family when she was 8-years-old. When the family that owned her left Egypt for the United States, they brought Shyima along on a forged visa to continue working for them.
    • 2/5
      This book could have been better. What put me off most was the author's writing style. It was just kind of bland.
    • 4/5
      Shyima recounts her story of working in bondage for a wealthy Egyptian family both in Egypt and later in the United States. While not always eloquent, the story is powerful, compelling, and eye-opening. Shyima recounts the abuse she endured and the work she did until someone finally reported her to the authorities. But even after she was "free", Shyima struggled in the aftermath of slavery and to find a family and support system that would help her heal. An important and eye-opening story, Shyima's journey is openly told and a testament to her resilience.