In this warm and intimate memoir, Humaira Awais Shahid tells her inspiring story. A bookish young woman who identified with the independent-minded heroines of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, she never dreamed that love would lead her to become the most prominent Muslim woman activist and legislator for women's rights in Pakistan. After falling for the son of a prominent newspaper family, Shahid joined the family business. She soon revamped the insipid...

"'Maria Toorpakai is a true inspiration, a pioneer for millions of other women struggling to pave their own paths to autonomy, fulfillment, and genuine personhood'--Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed. Maria Toorpakai hails from Pakistan's violently oppressive northwest tribal region, where the idea of women playing sports is considered haram--un-Islamic, forbidden--and girls rarely leave...