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What The Kidnapped Nigerian Schoolgirls Have To Tell Us

Seven years after the kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls, a new book shares insights into their survival strategies — and looks at the mixed blessing of the 'Bring Back Our Girls" campaign.
An image from the book <em>Bring Back Our Girls. </em>The families of these missing girls sent photos of them to photographer Glenna Gordon.

Seven years ago this April 14, armed Boko Haram terrorists kidnapped 276 school girls in the remote Nigerian town of Chibok. Fifty-seven of them managed to escape by jumping onto the highway as the trucks into which they'd been forced were driving away. The Boko Haram convoy continued on, taking the remaining 219 hostages to a destination, and a fate, unknown.

In Bring Back Our Girls: The Untold Story of the Global Search for Nigeria's Missing Schoolgirls, Wall Street Journal reporters Joe Parkinson and Drew Hinshaw, who were based in Africa at the time, present the story in gripping detail. The girls' return remained elusive for years, until the release or escape of 107 of the girls between 2016 and 2017.

The school girls' ordeal is central to the book, revealed through lengthy interviews conducted by the authors with 20 of those girls. Their accounts

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