Lend Me Your Voice: a freedom anthology
Author: Angela Burchett
Digital Download: 34 pages (Paperback version coming soon)
Cost: $0.00 (release special June 3-5; regularly priced on Kindle: $2.99, paperback: $7.99)
Publisher: Whole Soul Enterprises
ISBN-13: 978-0-692-11019-5
I would like to say thank you to Angela Burchett, the author of this book, for allowing me the space to share a review of this remarkable work and to be a part of your journey. I can’t wait to see all that’s in store for you!
I don’t imagine you have heard of Angela just yet, but you soon will. She is an author and a humanitarian whose work in non-profit organizations has spanned her entire adult life. This work has helped our fellow human beings walk into the light of real, physical freedom (not to mention emotional, mental, and spiritual freedom) and grow to recognize their own worth in a world that has disrespected, degraded, and abused them beyond our wildest imagination.
She chose to write Lend Me Your Voice in response to human trafficking and sexual exploitation in the world today – to give a voice to those 30 million+ humans who live as the dregs of society under the real and actual ownership of other humans, who are regularly bought and sold in the same way that we buy our morning Starbucks.
Before jumping straight into the review, I want to take the opportunity to share with you one woman’s story of being trapped in sex slavery in order for us to peer into this dark world and gain some context.
I wish I could say that Sadhna’s story is an isolated incident, but nothing about it is isolated. This doesn’t only happen to a select few, this doesn’t only happen in Kolkata. There are millions of men, women, and children being sold against their will every day to have their bodies abused by other people. This happens in every country in the world, including the United States. Dallas, D.C., London, Paris, Bangkok, Tokyo. Every corner has the reprehensible act of slavery happening to PEOPLE.
Lend Me Your Voice is an anthology of 14 poems written to convey to the reader what is occurring in the hearts and minds of people trapped in sexual exploitation. The author does not hold back anything here. No, every bit of grit and reality that those who suffer experience every day, that we are so very protected from in our own lives, is present here and displayed in heart-wrenching view for all to see.
The author, however, does not leave you with only the horrid and painful struggles that these people go through every day. She also offers hope – hope for the victims and for us. Shared in Lend Me Your Voice‘s encouraging, final poem, “Rise,” for those who are being trafficked, hope does exist; it exists in the idea that love will find these people and shine a light in the darkness of their current state. For us, this book is a call to action: We must not ignore, we must not turn away. We must acknowledge people as people and run after those who are imprisoned in slavery, throwing off the chains that bind them.
I highly recommend that if you do nothing else today, pick up this book. As of this review, the digital download is free. Lend Me Your Voice may be small, and the prospect of ending slavery in the world may be a giant, but sometimes it takes a small thing throwing a smooth stone at a giant to bring down an entire army that is lined up against you. This book is willing where others are silent. This author is brave where others are frightened.
Grade: A+
MSE