Hidden Girl: The True Story of a Modern-Day Child Slave by Shyima Hall (review)

Former child slave Shyima Hall, whose story has been recounted in bits and pieces in newspaper articles, gives a complete account of her life here. In her early years in Egypt she was poor but happy; when she was eight, her parents sold her to a wealthy family in payment for a debt. That family moved with Shyima as their only servant to California when she was ten, keeping her in captivity and forcing her to work sixteen-hour days until she was rescued at age thirteen. Upon her rescue, she was cowed by the Immigration agents not only because her captors had instilled in her a fear of police but also because as a Muslim girl she was forbidden to speak to unrelated men. Through counseling, education, and an intermittently positive experience with the foster-care system, she has emerged a strong and healthy woman with a goal to become an ICE agent herself. The book includes plentiful commentary on how slavery affects the emotional, mental, and physical health of its victims. The writing is straightforward and expository in style, with as much space given to Hall’s life after her rescue as during her enslavement. She is honest about her anger toward those who hurt her but also pragmatic and hopeful in relating the support she has from the family she has chosen for herself. Readers will likely be disappointed that there are no pictures, but a quick internet search will fill in those gaps. Most valuable are the tips she gives for people to understand how to detect when someone is possibly being enslaved and how to interact with someone who has been rescued, making this an important intervention into a growing problem.