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I first spoke with Naomi Adamu after she was freed from three years in captivity. She had been among the nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists from their dormitory in the town of Chibok in April 2014. International attention to that point had focused on the wildly popular, celebrity-driven social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls, rescue efforts and the horrors the girls’ captors subjected them to – forced labor, marriages and conversions to Islam. The girls themselves, in most accounts, were generally reduced to helpless, subdued prototypes of victimhood. But they were not.
As I discovered when I interviewed Adamu and some of the other young women, they were resourceful, defiant and tough. The proof is in the collaborative diaries they kept, which form the most authentic account of their ordeal. While the girls may not share the literary skill of an Anne Frank, their writings should serve the same purpose. Frank’s diaries transformed her from a mere victim of the Nazis to a global symbol of resilience and hope. Through their diaries, we see that the Chibok girls, now women, often took their destinies into their own hands. These women, whose faith and identity could be more important to them than their well-being, defied and outwitted one of the world’s deadliest terrorist groups.