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  • Mutilating Khalid: The Symbolic Politics of Female Genital Cutting
  • Daniel Mains (bio)
Mutilating Khalid: The Symbolic Politics of Female Genital Cutting, by Charles Steffen Trenton, New Jersey: Red Sea Press, 2011; pp. 228. $29.95 paper.

Charles Steffen’s Mutilating Khalid: The Symbolic Politics of Female Genital Cutting offers a fascinating examination of the symbolic dimensions of the case of Khalid Adem, an immigrant to the United States from Ethiopia who was convicted in 2006 on charges of aggravated assault and cruelty to children for allegedly circumcising his two-year-old daughter. Steffen relies primarily on court records, newspaper articles, and interviews with key participants in the Adem case to support his analysis.

Mutilating Khalid is divided into 11 chapters with titles like “The Symbol,” “The Place,” “The Script,” and “The Prosecution.” These chapters are highly effective in telling a story that begins with the setting, slowly introduces characters, and builds toward a courtroom battle. Structuring the book in a way that resembles a screenplay allows Steffen to hold the reader’s interest, and portions of Mutilating Khalid could honestly be described as “page turners.” Although Steffen makes the outcome of the Adem case clear at the outset, the reader is absorbed by the story and seeks to understand the series of events that led to this outcome. Steffen writes in a clear and engaging manner and uses almost no academic jargon, making Mutilating Khalid accessible to a popular audience.

Khalid Adem moved from Ethiopia to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1993, and Steffen, a professor of history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, does well to give extensive attention to the politics, culture, and economics of the greater metropolitan Atlanta area. In many ways, Mutilating Khalid is as much about urban history and the New South as it is about female genital cutting, and the Adem case tells us more about values and cultural practices in the United States than those in Ethiopia. Steffen describes the relationships between political power struggles and shifting demographics in different Atlanta suburbs. Details are provided concerning major players in the Adem case like journalists, lawyers, and politicians, and each of these characters is situated in the complex and changing Atlanta political context.

Steffen’s central argument is that in the Adem case, female genital cutting was a symbol around which a variety of different struggles were waged. Steffen claims that at different times and for different people, female genital cutting represents patriarchal power, cultural backwardness, a violation of [End Page 325] universal human rights, and a threat to U.S. cultural values. To the extent that Khalid Adem came to represent female genital cutting, the outcome of his case had little to do with serving justice and determining Adem’s guilt. Instead, Adem’s conviction was one result of a broader symbolic battle related to culture, nationality, identity, and gender, and Steffen raises a number of doubts about Adem’s actual guilt.

Steffen situates this conflict within the context of white flight to the suburbs, a recent influx of immigrants, battles between Republicans and Democrats, and struggles for gender equality. He argues that for conservative whites in suburban Atlanta, the Adem case represented an opportunity to lash out at a growing immigrant population. For white liberal feminists, the Adem case offered an opportunity for a political victory against domestic violence. Steffen’s analysis of how these seemingly opposed groups came together to pass legislation criminalizing female genital cutting is one of his many important insights.

Steffen’s discussion in the chapter titled “The Refugees” is particularly effective in demonstrating the problems with many of the meanings associated with female genital cutting. It is in this chapter that the reader learns about the complex, often contradictory, attitudes of African women concerning female genital cutting. Steffen tells the stories of African immigrant activists who simultaneously oppose female genital cutting and argue that Western public discourse concerning genital cutting stigmatizes African women in a way that often undermines their physical well-being, by preventing circumcised women from seeking health care treatment in the United States.

As strong as Steffen’s deconstruction of the symbolic qualities of female genital cutting is, there are points in Mutilating Khalid...

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