ACTIVISM

Leymah Gbowee’s Powerful Tale

‘Mighty Be Our Powers’ is a firsthand account of the Liberian war.

Liberian activist Leyhmah Gbowee’s first book, Mighty Be Our Powers, published by the Daily Beast’s Beast Books imprint, tells the powerful story of Gbowee’s struggle to organize women to bring peace to her native Liberia. For 14 years, Gbowee lived in refugee camps, always trying to make a life but realized she had to take action. In 2003, Gbowee began organizing women into peace demonstrations and drafted her own treaty, even demanding a meeting with the president to show it to him. One of Gbowee's valuable tools for activism is a sex strike: she organized Liberian women to withhold sex to show their opposition to the fighting. "And although peace did not happen the day she did that in July, it did turn the tides," said The Daily Beast’s Tina Brown about Gbowee’s struggle.