Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting by Miroslava Prazak (review)

In Making the Mark: Gender, Identity, and Genital Cutting, a new entry in the Research in International Studies Africa series of the Ohio University Press, Bennington College anthropology and African studies professor Miroslava Prazak writes about the vexing and often controversial topic of female genital mutilation, which she calls simply genital cutting. For nearly thirty years, she researched and witnessed aspects of it among the Kuria people in a rural, southwestern Kenyan farming society, where she lived her “life alongside theirs, studying, learning, teaching, and enjoying” (p. xiii).

Instead of presenting genital cutting as a backward traditional practice, Prazak admits that she has “come to acknowledge and appreciate how members of the community move through an initiation cycle replete with richly complex meanings” (p. 1). Prazak did not come casually to the crucial conclusions in this book: she explains, “I have had countless conversations with friends, colleagues, and students grappling with the issues of genital cutting, especially female genital cutting” (p. 2).

Apart from a list of black-and-white pictures and other illustrations, acknowledgments, a glossary of words, copious notes, a bibliography, an index, and an appendix, this book has seven chapters and a brief but purposeful epilogue (pp. 237–38). The chapters cover such thematic topics as boys, girls’ feasting, differences in genital-cutting procedures, and the query behind chapter seven: “Where Do We Go from Here” (pp. 205–36).

Prazak examines what she sees as the influences both shaping and changing genital cutting and offers readers a rich mosaic of the voices that add to the ritual. She documents what she sees as stumbling blocks in carrying the procedure out. On one occasion, “rumors of witchcraft had succeeded in bringing preparations for an initiation season to a halt. The threats posed by outsiders, whether human or animal, were scrutinized for hidden meanings and indications that supernatural forces would negatively affect the outcome of the initiations and lead to deaths among the initiates” (p. 58).

In chapter seven, Prazak shows how she was trusted by the Kuria people and other Kenyans, especially when it came to information about the initiation procedures: “Having spent the year in 2003 in Bukuria, I was not present when the 2004 initiation season was discussed and declared. But I was informed about it [during] the whole year, in phone calls from friends and prior assistants, as well as by e-mail” (p. 205).

In the epilogue, Prazak shows how Kenyan officialdom does not necessarily condone the practice of the genital cutting, which carries the derogatory name of female genital mutilation internationally. An example of official meddling occurred in 2014: “The initiation season . . . burst into violence with an exchange of gunfire as [Kenyan] police tried to arrest parents and initiates going for [the] traditional genital cutting operation in Kuria East Constituency” (p. 237).

This is a book that should be useful to experts, researchers, and general readers.