By Abasifreke Effiong
More Than Just a Girl! Optimizing the Privileges of Girlhood is written by Miss Ndueso Young. Published on July 18, 2012 by WestBow Press, Bloomington, Indiana, the-191 (xxiv+167) page book comprising 12 chapters, has 16 review summaries on its preliminary pages. The book’s foreword is written by Eniabitobi Kuyinu, founder and president of The Educator. A print copy is sold for $17.99 (N6,000) and e-copy sold for $4.
The author, Ms. Ndueso Young, is a Psychologist with interest in Industrial Psychology, a pro girl campaigner and public speaker. She is an alumnae of the University of Lagos; author of Staying Chaste, and founder of TeenGirls Foundation. She has held campaigns on chastity and leadership in Akwa Ibom, Rivers State among others. Her campaigns on chastity and girl-child education have won national awards.
More Than Just a Girl has received national and international acclaim and recognitions. Thrilled by her classic, Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo and Governor Udom Emmanuel, traced and visited Ms. Ndueso in her hometown, Odio, where she was staying in a self-contained with her brother, Williams Young. That particular recognition speaks volume about the impact of the book, More Than Just a Girl! Ms. Ndueso is from Odio community, in Eket local government area, Akwa Ibom State.
Miss Ndueso Young, author of More Than Just a Girl!
The book was inspired by the author’s personal experience while growing up as a young school girl in Odio, a rural community in Akwa Ibom State. The author, perplexed by the vicious cycle of poverty created by young girls who left the outcomes of their life to chance, particularly the skewed perception of society that everything about the girl-child is her sexuality, morphed the courage and wrote about the unique strengths of the girl-child. The girl-child is more than just her feminine attributes, that is the meat of the book.
The author had first-hand contacts with teenaged girls from poor homes who got pregnant, left school to bear children who had no basic care from their maternal grandparents who themselves were already impoverished. These cases were predominant; the quest to chart a new course, and challenge the girl-child to understand that she can do better than just being a girl prompted the writing of this book!
The book has 12 chapters. Chapter one is on “Where Yesterday Lives”, chapter two – “Pursuit of True Success”, chapter three – “Guard Up”, chapter four – “Towards Empowering Friendship”, chapter five – “Inside Out”, chapter six – “The Triple Reality”, chapter seven – “Everyday Refining”. Chapter eight is on “Painted Pictures”, chapter nine – “Lofty Girls are Goalers!”, chapter 10 – “Take Action, Own Your Glory”, chapter 11 – “Prioritise and Stay With it”, chapter 12 – “Attitude is Everything”. Each chapter has a provision for the reader to take self-drill and jot down personal reflections while reading.
Chapter one speaks about practices that limited women’s advancement in the past, the history of the freedom of ‘womanity’, the pioneering roles of Elizabeth C. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and other women, which led to the first Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York in July 1848.
The author notes that the struggle by Stanton and Co, brought freedom to women. Now women have greater limitless opportunities, albeit many self-inflicted troubles. Such self-inflicted trouble as obsession with vain desire of “fitting” into standards set by society, than standing out has stunted the growth, the full capacities and capabilities of the girl-child. These limitations arise during girlhood. The author defines girlhood as a period of “intentional preparations”, a period when the girl is expected to take “consequence-scaled choices”. She says failure to make right choices during girlhood makes the girl habitually dependent and cause society to see her as “horn targets.” The chapter answers the question, “why are we girls?”, and ends with a reminder that every girl is her own responsibility and whatever she becomes is strictly her choice.
Chapter two talks about the “pursuit of true success”. Girls should have the right perception about success. In the book, success means “standing out based on your abilities” or living a life which suits our inner identity. The author gives two perspectives to the definition of success: the entangled definition and the customised definition. Entangled definition sees success from the standpoint of others, while customised definition sees success from the standpoint of personal capacity and discovered personal purpose in life. She recommends the latter and emphasizes that the pursuit of success should be in- line with God’s standards. She says some girls mistake fake lifestyles projected by society as the perfect picture of success; consequently, they resign themselves to feeling worthless. No girl is under any obligation to copy the style she sees around her.
RELATED STORY : How Ndueso Young hosted Nigeria’s Vice President, Governor, in a self-contained
Chapter three emphasises chasity. The author points the girl-child to the frustrations that come with engaging in romantic love. She warns that girlhood is not a period when young girls should lay down their lives for “seem-great pleasures” and loose-living which deny them opportunity of positive self-fulfilment. Top-headed girls live guarded lives, they are intentional about creating their own realities. The chapter names four practical steps to empower the girl to guard up.
While guarding up, it pays to build “empowering friendship”, that is the focus of chapter four. The author talks about how to relate and make friends with both genders without yielding to abuses. Friendship here means a relationship that exists between two or more persons defined by unconditional but not uncritical love, and demonstrated through sacrificial acts of commitment. She says girlhood is the time to build friendship with people who are real and share your values as well.
Chapter five entitled, “inside out” emphasizes the need for self-development. During girlhood the girl-child has a lot of options and some girls have made the mistake of choosing what the author calls, “external shinnings”, than developing themselves. She says, “external decorations (fixing of good and costly wig, nails and makeups) have become a major aspiration for many girls…than multi-dimensional growth (mental, physical and spiritual)”. She emphasizes a balance between looks, self-development and the aspiration to know more.
While chapter five talks about general self-development, chapter six talks about developing “the triple reality”. For a girl-child to establish herself, she must first establish her life’s triple reality – talents, passion and purpose. Most girls have not discovered their talents, passion and purpose in their lifetime because they missed the timing of their personal self-discovery during girlhood. The author says a woman has four timings or seasons, viz., childhood, girlhood, lady-hood and womanhood. Each season has its own expectations. The chapter closes with an emphasis that discovering one’s talents is a personal drive, you need to depend on God for guidance to discover it.
Chapter seven talks about talent processing. The author calls it “talent refining”. She says society does not buy raw talent, hence talent refining is a sine qua non for every young person. Talent refining means processing your talent from the raw state to a servable state. It means skilling up. She says talent refining should be intentional and planned. She urges women to exert such keen attention to tend their talent as they spend time to tend their hairs and faces.
Chapter eight talks about the need for the girl-child to have a positive and clear, specific and detailed purpose-driven mental picture of the life they want to lead. The author frowns at idleness and truancy, and insists that “life becomes a roll of the dice when we [fail] to create a worthwhile and purpose-driven mental picture” of what we want.
Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, congratulating Miss Ndueso Young, on her book, More Than Just a Girl, while Mr. Udom Emmanuel, Governor of Akwa Ibom State watches with admiration.
She says in chapter nine that “lofty girls are goalers”. Goalers are people who set specific, measurable and realisable goals. They are people who have clear, personal life plans and write down specific actions they would take to achieve those plans. In her opinion, little can be achieved by the girl whose energy is given to all courses that call her attention. The chapter emphasizes the need to encourage girls to develop the discipline of sequential planning and decision making.
When you have a plan, a job that would be done, then you have to take action. That is what chapter 10 talks about – taking action. The author recalls her tedious it was to start her chastity campaign for young girls after high school. She talks how she battled the thoughts about her age as a teenager (she was 17 years then), the lack of money and how to start. All those thoughts had nearly delayed her from taking actions toward the accomplishment of her plan. She notes that young girls who have set goals have found it difficult take action. In such circumstance, she advises that they should seek help from friends who can assist them take action.
Chapter 11 is a call to prioritise decisions and stay with it. Using personal instances, the author says a lot of people often make the mistake of choice when a priority conflicts with a commitment. She advises that we should always stick to our priority as against commitment to ensure our time is properly spent. The chapter closes with the charge that staying on our priority is key to attaining lofty heights.
In chapter 12, the author sums up by saying that keeping a positive, winning attitude is everything. She talks about attitude and altitude, saying that the altitude one gets to is a function her attitude. Against the widely held opinion that people cannot change their attitude easily, this author says attitude is very easy to change. “You may not be able to change your height or your body type, but you can change your attitude…”, she said.
More Than Just a Girl is a fantastic presentation. The diction is simple, choice of words very appropriate for all levels of reader. The length of chapters and paragraphs are short and even; texts are clear, clean and legible for easy read. An avid reader can finish the book in a day. The cover design, printing and finishing are superb, in fact, they are the first attraction for the reader. Very few grammatical roughs. The content of the book is rich because other relevant works are cited and people’s experiences are used copiously. However, other works cited are not referenced exhaustively. The book does not have a reference page. This little deficiency does not make the book fall short of what it is, a classic!. More Than Just a Girl is a must read for every child, parents and guidance. Every girl-child who desires to change her life for the better should read More Than Just a Girl! I strongly recommend it.
True, more than just a girl