Mighty Be Our Powers summary

After the rebel soldiers arrived in Monrovia, Gbowee would wake up in the mornings with dread. On the one hand, she was thankful to be alive, but there was no escaping the fear.

Her family was lucky to find accommodation in the US embassy for a while. But in September of 1990, Gbowee and her sisters and mother were given a room on a cargo ship, while her father stayed at the embassy.

In the summer of 1995, another peace treaty was signed by Charles Taylor, of the NPFL, and the other warring factions. But it wasn’t long before the familiar sounds of bullets and rockets were once again filling the air. Pop-pop-pop! Boom! Boom!

In April of 1996, Gbowee was once again fleeing a war zone. This time she was pregnant and accompanied by her two children and their father, Daniel. They found space on the Bulk Challenge, an ancient Nigerian freighter that was less cruise ship than waking nightmare.

With her abusive husband left behind, Leymah Gbowee went back to her parents’ house in Monrovia, now with three children of her own. Once again, Gbowee returned to a country in ruins.

While many considered the NPFL leader, Charles Taylor, to be a monster, quite a few also believed he was the only chance Liberia had for lasting peace. So Taylor won the presidential elections in July of 1997.

As a member of the Trauma Healing project, Gbowee traveled to Ghana in 2000 to take part in an international conference being organized by West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP).

At the time, Liberia was relatively peaceful, but as was always the case in these years, the threat of war loomed large. One big threat was Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), an anti-Taylor group that had already fought in skirmishes against President Taylor’s army in Northern Liberia.

In 2003, there was international pressure for Liberian President Charles Taylor to negotiate with opposition forces for peace, but Taylor wasn’t having it.

For Gbowee, it was clear: the men had failed. So it was the women’s turn to bring about peace.

The past thirteen years of violence had made it clear that a signed peace treaty was no guarantee of lasting peace. Even with Charles Taylor in exile, keeping the peace was going to take work.

That’s why Leymah Gbowee wasn’t about to stop her peacebuilding efforts with WIPNET.

In September of 2006, Gbowee received a call from a woman named Abigail Disney who’d recently learned of Gbowee’s amazing peacebuilding work. She went on to tell Gbowee that, as a feminist and a philanthropist, she was hoping to produce a documentary about Liberia’s “peace women.”

The film, directed by Gini Reticker, is called Pray the Devil Back to Hell, and brought Gbowee some very unexpected attention.