"Mikela: Memoirs of a Maasai Woman" confronts the topics of female circumcision, rape, other forms of brutality against women, and prostitution and HIV in the fictional memoirs of a young Tanzanian Maasai woman.

Laurel, MD (BlackNews.com) - Novelist Jacyee Aniagolu-Johnson weaves realism to fiction with her first original release, Mikela: Memoirs of a Maasai Woman.

Mikela focuses on the journey of adolescent and beautiful Mikela, a Tanzanian Maasai, across two continents. Her unlikely fairytale unfolds in the open plains of Maasai Steppe where she is subjected to many of the accepted cultural traditions, including teenage marriage, polygamy and female circumcision.

Female circumcision - also called female genital mutilation, or FGM - is the practice of severing a female's clitoris and has been performed on 100 million to 130 million women and girls worldwide. Today, this procedure is still being carried out in many parts of Africa, Asia and Middle East where female circumcision is revered as a "rite of womanhood and a religious obligation."

For young Mikela, the emotional scar of her female circumcision forces her to flee her homeland. As Mikela grapples with her own personal agony, she experiences a series of tragedies and social ills. Mikela becomes a victim of rape, and later befriends another woman who took to street prostitution and contracted HIV/AIDS, all tying back to the woman's experience of female circumcision. Throughout these challenges and heartaches, Mikela is a soul survivor as she triumphs through her unsighted journey towards self-discovery, forgiveness, finally learning to love and trust again. Mikela is a neatly woven story about life's challenges, despair and hope, inner spiritual strength and the power of our individual faith to achieve ultimate triumph.

In September 2004, the author Jacyee Aniagolu-Johnson was awarded the "Woman of Excellence" award by the Miss Nigeria USA Organization for her "selfless commitment to uplifting the African woman" through her creative writing. Mikela has also been awarded an iUniverse Editor's Choice award and is currently available through iUniverse (www.iuniverse.com) as well as www.karibubooks.com, Amazon.com (www.amazon.com), www.books-a-million.com, www.blackwell.co.uk, www.powells.com, www.bookfinder.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and www.bordersstores.com, and is available at all other major online bookstores.

The author Jacyee Aniagolu-Johnson was born in Nigeria, Africa, is married and now resides with her family in Laurel, Maryland. Her distinguished career includes technical consulting for the United Nations Development Program, and clinical pharmaceutical drug development work. She also holds a doctorate in Microbiology. Mikela is her first published fiction work and was inspired by her cultural and medical knowledge of female circumcision, and the human devastation being caused by prostitution and HIV in Africa.