A searing, deeply personal memoir of a tenacious Afghan Girl who educated herself behind closed doors and fought her way to a new life.
They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, and turned the clock backwards on women\'s rights, practically imprisonin.
That same year, the Taliban took over her country for the first time.
Seeing the way people like Sola Mahfouz think about the world reinforces my optimism about the future.―
BILL GATES Sola Mahfouz was born in Afghanistan in 1996.
Stories like this inspire me.
A searing, deeply personal memoir of a tenacious Afghan Girl who educated herself behind closed doors and fought her way to a new life.
An engrossing, dramatic memoir, co-written with young Indian American human rights activist Malaina Kapoor, Defiant Dreams is the story of one girl, but it\'s also the untold story of a generation of women brimming with potential and longing for freedom.
In 2016, she escaped to the United States, where she is now a quantum computing researcher at Tufts University.
Faced with obstacles at every turn, Sola still managed to sneak into Pakistan to take the SAT.
She progressed rapidly, and within just two years she was already studying topics such as philosophy and physics.
At age sixteen, without even a basic ability to add or subtract, she began secretly to teach herself math and English.
She decided that Education would be her way out.
Driven by this devastating realization, Sola began a years-long fight to change the trajectory of her life.
The rest of her life would be controlled entirely by men, fathers and husbands and sons who would never allow her to study, to earn money, or even to dream.
Her future was empty.
As time passed, Sola began to understand that she was condemned to the same existence as millions of women in Afghanistan.
She saw the outside world only a handful of times each year.
After that she was confined to her home, required to cook and clean and prepare for an arranged marriage.
At age eleven, Sola was forced to stop attending school after a group of men threatened to throw acid in her face if she continued.
They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, and turned the clock backwards on women\'s rights, practically imprisoning women within their own homes and forcing them to wear all-concealing burqas.
That same year, the Taliban took over her country for the first time.
Sola Mahfouz was born in Afghanistan in 1996.
A searing, deeply personal memoir of a tenacious Afghan Girl who educated herself behind closed doors and fought her way to a new life
