Blood Stains, a best-seller in France, is a Diaspora memoir about growing up in a traditional family in Senegal and emigration to Paris. Its feisty protagonist, Khady, suffers genital mutilation at age seven, a brutal rite that entails lifelong distress, sexual trauma and harrowing childbirths. Married off at thirteen to a man two decades older, the teenager bears five children, and, as a battered wife, blows the whistle on an immigrant community that serves men's interests. Not content to remain a victim, however, the young woman fights for education, earns an independent living and becomes...