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I knew nothing about Alek Wek when I added this book to my amazon wishlist. However, since reading her memoir, I want to know everything about her.

The first thing I loved about this book was Alek's obvious love of her home, Sudan. The majority of this book is about her life there, not her model life. While she does talk about how she got into modeling, and several of her experiences as a model, including the racism she has encountered in and outside of the industry, her story is much more about where she came from, rather than where she is headed. I liked that. I think Alek could do a part 2 of her story to talk about her experiences since this books release but, even if she never does, I do think you get a really good understanding of who she is as a person, outside of her "job" as a model.

I will warn you, Alek does not sugar coat anything here. She talks about her experiences with war, her experiences with witnessing death and poverty in her village. She talks about the traditions she grew up with, including animal sacrifice, it is all here. if you cannot take that, I would tell you not to read this book. This is her life and you get the sense here that she is telling you these things so you understand her culture and traditions. It was one of the reasons I loved this book; you learned about her culture and traditions.

If you pick this book up purely to know about the model side of her life, you will disappointed. There is no behind the scenes stuff on other models. She makes it very clear here that you live modeling job to modeling job. You are critiqued about everything, especially your weight and, sometimes, you skin tone is "too dark" for what they are looking for. While Alek does acknowledge the privileges she has had since starting in the modeling world, she does bring forth the cautionary tales about what it cane really be like in that world.

Overall five stars for a really good, informative story, that I could not put down.