Sonita: My Fight Against Tyranny and My Escape to Freedom

Afghan activist and rap artist Alizada debuts with a serviceable coming-of-age memoir. As a five-year-old in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the early 2000s, Alizada could see that boys had better lives than girls. That observation solidified into a political stance as she took note of the forced marriages, child brides, and domestic violence around her. Alizada’s mother “could barely handle sleeping next to” her father, and her sister, Aziz, miscarried after her husband beat her. When her free-spirited brother Razeq’s defiant partying spurred the Taliban to raid the family home and seize their possessions, Alizada and her relatives fled to Iran, the first in a series of moves between the two countries that form the bulk of the narrative. During that period, Alizada secretly fulfilled her dream of learning to read and write by attending an NGO-funded school against her family’s wishes. There, exposure to literature and music—especially rap—motivated her to write and record her own songs, which eventually garnered international attention. Alizada’s straightforward prose effectively conveys her loss of innocence as she comes to understand the burdens placed on women. Though readers may be left with the impression that the most interesting parts of Alizada’s story are yet to come, this inspires. Agent: Mark Tauber, Watermark Agency. (July)

Correction: An earlier version of this review mistakenly referred to the author’s grandmother and grandfather in the fourth sentence, rather than her mother and father.