An interesting graphic novel that tackles a rather heavy subject matter. Yu Kiang, a Chinese man in love with Antoinette, a Congolese woman, and learns that she is a victim of female genital mutilation. It's a harrowing subject that I think was tackled rather well overall.

'A Little Piece of Her' by Zidrou with art by Raphael Beuchot is a daring graphic novel about a subject I didn't think I'd ever run across.

Yu Kiang is Chinese and works for a lumber company in the Congo. He is in love with Antoinette and this is a problem since he can be deported by his company. Then the story takes a pretty sharp twist as Yu Kiang discovers that Antoinette is a victim of female genital mutilation. He seeks to stop this from happening to Antoinette's young daughter, Marie Leontine, but will he be able to do anything in time?

This is a very rough subject, and a very serious one for a graphic novel to take on. There are a few articles in the back to further education. The art is also pretty good in this one.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Europe Comics and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

I requested this book because of the cover and the publishing house. I had not read what it was about soI did not realize the title's significance. I was blown away by this book; this story. I had read about female genital mutilation before, but never in a graphic novel format. This is a book that needs to find its way to readers' hands.

Informative and moving expose of female genital mutilation set inside a pleasant narrative. I would have liked this to be a longer and more complex story, but I appreciate it for what it is and look forward to more work from this author.

Very tough subject matter, as it deals with the practice of female genital mutilation common in some parts of Africa and the middle East. It also deals with an interracial relationship between two people from cultures where this is heavily frowned upon, and how they attempt to overcome the mountains of obstacles in their way.

A Little Piece of Her by Zidrou and Raphael Beuchot was inspiring to read, it is so real and tragic. It is not a topic that I am familiar with, just something that I had heard of in school but to know that it is still happening to girls to this day is maddening. The art is amazing, it was very detailed and realistic if the location looked gritty I felt gritty looking at it. I recommend this graphic novel to everyone, of course due to some of the scenes it is not appropriate for children, maybe 16 and older. However this is a topic that deserves to be shared and spoken of more often.

A Little Piece Of Her tries to educate on the evils of female genital mutilation using a story of a Chinese man and a Congolese woman trying to make their relationship work. Apart from the awkwardness of interracial relations in Congo, the book also takes a cursory look at politics and the way expatriate investors view and interact with their local employees and vice versa.

A Little Piece Of Her is an ode to the courage of countless people swimming against the tide of exploitation, racial discrimination, and sexism. It also shows how insidious the practice of female genital mutilation is and the outdated thinking behind it. It reveals the progress being made and highlights ways to help combat it.

A Little Piece Of Her is an educational comic that hid its message in a solid story setting. The art is okay but the dialogue is one of the best things about it. This is a book with a powerful message and a solution.

Many thanks to Europe Comics for review copy.

This is NOT from an advance review copy for which I DO NOT thank the publisher.

I have to rate this negatively because of the shabby way the publisher treats people who ask to review it. The graphic novel was not downloadable as ebooks typically are, but set up in some ass-backward "copy protection" system that means you cannot load it, read a part of it, and get back to it later to finish it. You have to constantly download it. What this meant is that the book was locked away ("archived" they call it) before I could finish reading it, and that shabby treatment of a reviewer, I consider WARTY in the extreme.

I don't get paid for this work, except in that I get to read books! But I'd be read books anyway and thanks to Amazon's deliberate and calculated sabotaging of book prices, I could get all the free books I want from them if I didn't refuse to do business with Amazon.

Jeff Bezos in now the richest man ever, BTW. Ahead of Bill Gates. Ahead of Mark Zuckerberg. Ahead of Warren Buffett, and to my knowledge, and unlike those latter three, he hasn't signed on to the pledge to give away at least half his fortune. Yet the authors who publish with him are lucky to get a fraction of the ninety-nine cents he has very effectively forced many people to charge for their hard work. Ninety-nine cents! That's less than the old pulp writers used to get paid! It would be nice if he gave some of his fortune to help out the struggling authors who've helped make him a multi-billionaire, wouldn't it?!

No, I do this because I love books and I feel people have a right to a chance at being read and getting some exposure, but this publisher seems hell bent on sabotaging that process. The format had purportedly extra protection built into it such that it was not possible to download it - a reviewer like me, who can only get the ebook (which is fine - it saves a tree here and there!), has to read this one on a web page or some fly-by-night temporary platform. If you close the page, you then have to go through the laborious process of accessing it all over again.

Worse, there is no means of conveniently navigating from one page to another on my tablet, except by sliding each individual page up or down the screen. If you want to go back and check something at the start, it's a long chore in a two hundred page comic.

The idea behind this is purportedly to protect the work by specifically assigning it to a person's email address, and I can fully understand the need for protection of copyrighted work, but in practice, this method offers no protection whatsoever, since anyone who can read something like this on their screen can take a screen-shot and copy it very effectively and quite anonymously that way. So to me it made no sense, and all it offered in practice was an inconvenience and annoyance to honest reviewers who would never abuse the privilege we have of getting an advance review copy of a work. As I said, I will not be recommending this, and neither will I be requesting anything to review from this publisher (Europe Comics) ever again.

It is amazing to me how the graphic novel format has taken on such incredibly heavy and important subjects. A Little Piece of her is about female genital mutilation, and it's beautiful in its devastation. A worthy read.

Thank you NetGalley and Europe comics for offering educators advanced copies of your books.
My students are middle school-aged, and while I desperately want to share this story with them, I think it is better suited for high school and college. I look forward to sharing the title with other educators and some of my former students.

Here is the text of the current "review" at the link provided:
"Harrowing. Impactful. I have absolutely no idea how or what to rate this.
Review to come.

Requested & received this book for free from Netgalley."

There will be a review to come upon its final editing and uploading.

Lovely. This hit the perfect tone of being a real, emotionally engaging story that brings light to an important issue. (Rather than being a bland, well intentioned 'after school special.') The additional information about female sexual mutilation at the end is also very helpful and well-presented.

Yu Kiang falls for a Congolese woman while working for a Chinese lumberjack company in the Congo. He is growing in love for not only Antoinette, but her children, as well. One night, Yu discovers a scar that Antoinette carries from her youth, one resulting from an awful tradition. Yu decides to do everything in his power to prevent Antoinette’s daughter, Marie-Léontine, from enduring the same pain.

A Little Piece of Her is a story that needs to be told. It tackles issues that feel too terrible to name. The novel centers around female circumcision and the removal of the clitoris in the name of tradition.

This story opened my eyes to just how far this monstrous act stretches. Every year, there are approximately 3 to 4 million girls mutilated through the practice of female circumcision. It is a disgusting practice that needs to end.

This is definitely different than any other graphic novel that I have read, but in a good way. It's a great example of using graphic novels as a channel to raise awareness of issues and give them a human face, rather than just being an abstract concept. Beyond tackling female genital mutilation, this story also touched on issues of colonialism, racism, misogyny, and prejudice against interracial relationships (on a side note, I appreciated seeing an interracial relationship where neither of the partners were white, because I feel like that's a fairly rare thing to find). Although the story in of itself was fairly simplistic, it was a powerful story and I think that it did serve its purpose in raising awareness and providing information about FGM, its practice now and in the past, and the movement to end it.

Wow. This little book tackles a very important topic that very few people actively discuss. Bringing awareness of FGM in a very direct way, discussing cultural differences, and being downright visually stunning, this graphic novel is a powerful little beast. I quickly grew attached to the characters, and it is devastating to know that many women go through a similar story as the main character, Antoinette, and her daughter Marie-Léontine. The audience is educated about the shocking process of FGM through the eyes of Yu Kiang, who is himself learning about the controversial tradition for the first time. Important, relevant, and gripping.

I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I've read about FGM or Female Genital Mutilation before. However, I was not aware that this custom was still being practiced by some ethnic tribes in my country and in some neighboring South East Asian countries. This comic book is quite informative because it has a brief explanation and other useful information about FGM, and it also points out countries where it was still being practice.

Both the story and the art were well written, illustrated and put together to produce this surprisingly compelling graphic novel. Lastly, spreading awareness about this appalling tradition through reading and distribution of this print material will help lessen or much better is to discontinue it finally.

I don't expect to see this kind of topic handled in comics, but this was a powerful book. Short and emotional, this book tackled a topic that is more common than I had believed. It's unbelievable that this sort of thing occurs so commonly to young girls all over the world.. I'm a respecter of other cultures and their traditions but this is something that needs to stop.

Bravo to the artist! Bravo!

For tackling FGM in comic format. It is such a hard and painful topic. It makes my blood boil. In this world where women are so often discriminated against and oppressed here is a brutal custom perpetuated by women upon women. Why? All in the name of 'tradition'. What tradition?

I hate FGM. I truly hate it and I earnestly hope for the day when women will turn their back on this wickedness. This is a custom that needs to end. We need greater education for women and for more men in positions of power to speak up against it, because these girls are your daughters and the women doing this are your wives, aunties and sisters.

End FGM now!

I am truly grateful that these artists were able to create a story about this heinous custom and also give the story a hopeful ending. The artwork is excellent and the text within the novel is enough to convey a powerful story of love across cultures.

I also liked the less obvious aspects of the story about global business and the Chinese in Africa, and about deforestation and the environment. The artist touched on all these issues through pictures and not words, and they did this through simple storytelling using art.

This is an excellent comic and the best I have read all year. It is going on my list of exquisite reads for 2018.

Copy provided by Europe Comics via Netgalley in Exchange for an unbiased review.

A beautiful and compelling manner to shed light on an epidemic affecting women all over the world. Alice Walker would be proud that her pioneering work in this field is having lasting effect.

Wow, this is a powerful read and make no mistake. It's also a darkly disturbing story in the end, so be prepared – although rest assured, the real gall is raised by the real-life data and testimony after the story's concluded. Our hero is in love with a hooker and her kids while working in Africa for a Chinese company, raping all the trees out of the national parks. But she has a secret she's unwilling to reveal to him, for shame and embarrassment – and it's not her skill and knowledge when it comes to Modigliana nudes. The story is perfectly balanced – she herself is a force to reckon with, with a strong mind and spirit, as well as a body to die for. He's not perfect (who could be, doing the job he does?), but you know you want to be him. That balance is also fully evident in the reveal of the serious themes of the read, which touch severally on racism, and on many other things. I loved the visual way the past came into the present. I won't go further, as many other reviewers will mention what I didn't know to be at the core of this book, but dammit I will urge everyone to read it.

I thought, oh, this is going to be another French story told about the Congo, as the others in this series have done. I thought I would just jump in, check it out and get out again.

But, as I started reading it, I was so drawn in, I couldn't put it down until it was finished.

The story is of Yu, a Hong Kong Chinese in the Congo, where a Chinese company is cutting down trees, and using the local population for labor. The Chinese abuse the locals as much as every other European has, and that is touched on in the story, but that is not the main focus.


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The main focus is on Yu and his relationship with Antoinette and her daughter that he calls the Lioness. He has fallen in love with the little family, and is shocked to discover that Antoinette has had Female Genital Mutilation.

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The story continues, and focuses on this horrible event that happened to her, and how she never wants it to happen to her daughter.

There are resources, at the end of the book, that discuss ways this can be avoided, how countries are trying to stop it, and how it continues to this day.

Well written, interesting look at the modern Congo.


Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.