Defiance : a memoir of awakening, rebellion, and survival in Syria / Loubna Mrie.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

" Defiance takes my breath away. A nail-biting tale of astonishing courage." --Jeannette Walls #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle

"A heartbreaking account of a young woman's struggle for freedom against the rampaging forces of fanaticism and tyranny . . . Unforgettable." --Lawrence Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower and T he Human Scale

A stunning memoir of personal rebellion and political awakening from a young woman raised to be loyal to a brutal regime--and the unimaginable cost of choosing freedom

Like any good Alawite girl, every day at school, Loubna Mrie pledged allegiance to Hafez al-Assad. When she complained about memorizing his speeches for class, she was told to shorten her tongue--without the president, her family believed, the Alawites would be persecuted by the Sunni majority, as they had been for centuries before the Assads came to power. A girl's role was to obey, not to question. Loubna's father, a mercurial businessman with close ties to the Assad regime, ruled over his wife and daughters with absolute authority. In their world, loyalty was sur-vival. Curiosity was blasphemy. Dissent was betrayal.

But everything changed in 2011, when the pro-democracy uprisings of the Arab Spring reached Syria. Unable to suppress her curiosity, Loubna attended an anti-government protest. What she witnessed--the courage, the brutality, and the lies that followed--ignited something in her that would not be extinguished. She joined the resistance, risking her life by fearlessly proclaiming her Alawite heritage and, later, as a photojournalist documenting the war for Reuters and other outlets. Her defiance would come at a devastating cost: the loss of loved ones, her community, and ultimately her country. Leaving behind everything she knew, she would have to find a new home within herself.

Defiance is the unforgettable account of one woman's fight for freedom--against a father, a dictator, and the weight of inherited belief. From the streets of Aleppo to exile in New York City, it offers an electrifying portrait of moral courage in the face of authoritarianism and violence. Told with clarity, fury, and grace, Defiance offers a rare ground-level portrait of what it means to wake up, to resist, and to become.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In her first book, photojournalist Mrie recounts coming of age at the beginning of the Syrian civil war and the devastating costs of her involvement in documenting the conflict. Born into a family of Alawites, a minority group that ruled the country and prospered under the protection of the ruling al-Assad family, Mrie began questioning the government when the Arab Spring protests of 2010 spread to Syria. Inspired by her mother's encouragement of education and personal liberty, Mrie began recording the clashes between protestors and government forces, a rejection of her family's loyalty to Bashar al-Assad, which eventually led to her estrangement from relatives and friends, her exile from the country, and a series of personal losses. Mrie uses an exceptional eye for detail to evoke her surroundings, whether it be the peaceful Syrian countryside of her childhood or the carnage-filled chaos of rebel-held villages under bombardment. But the most remarkable aspect of Mrie's memoir is her unflinching honesty as she details how trauma and guilt led to her struggles with impulsive behavior and an addiction to alcohol. VERDICT Recommended for libraries with sizable collections of autobiographies and memoirs, Mrie's book will resonate with readers.--Sara Shreve

Publishers Weekly Review

The large-scale tragedies of the Syrian civil war are rendered on an intimate scale in Mrie's plaintive debut. The author grew up in a Syrian family that supported the Baathist dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar. Her father, Jawdat, was an intelligence official, and her clan was part of the Alawite religious minority that was the regime's base. But when anti-government protests erupted in 2011, a 20-year-old Mrie joined the opposition, documenting the demonstrations as a journalist and ferrying medical supplies to the resistance. She fled to Turkey in 2012 shortly before her mother died under mysterious circumstances, then returned for several reporting trips back to rebel-held areas of Syria, which grew dangerous as Islamic State militants began to dominate these regions. Mrie's narrative charts a struggle with many kinds of oppression: Assad's tyranny, the enmity with which Alawites were treated by the Sunni majority that dominated the rebel movement, and Arab society's pervasive sexism. She captures the chaos of Syria's upheaval with raw immediacy ("I gasp for air, struggling to breathe through the fine, chalklike dust kicked up from the stampede," she writes of soldiers attacking a demonstration), and offers a heartbreaking excavation of the psychic wounds that left her struggling with alcoholism and failed relationships. This haunting account illuminates the human cost of Syria's collapse. (Feb.)

Kirkus Book Review

A Syrian journalist struggles to free herself from a dictator--and her father. When Mrie's grandfather, a diplomat, died of a heart attack, the president of Syria came to pay his respects. The event marks the beginning of her mother's infelicitous union with another consequential visitor: a businessman who became wealthy assassinating fellow Alawites who opposed the government. During a childhood marked by violence, beauty proves redeeming. "Silvery scales of large fish shimmer[ing] in the sunlight" catch Mrie's eye after her mother's move to the coastal city of Jableh. A former photojournalist for Reuters, Mrie writes with a photographer's eye for detail: sounds, scents (a "terrible odor" wafting from a shrine her grandmother took her to visit), and, of course, light, which can enliven any scene, or drown it. Growing up mesmerized by the sea, the author writes that she was determined not to "'shorten her tongue'--a polite way of saying 'shut up' in Arabic"--as she was asked to do from a young age. When the 2011 uprising begins, she breaks free from her father. Cut off from her allowance, she takes up a job and befriends a group of artists who introduce her to video journalism, providing the world with images of "the most social-mediated conflict" in history. Mrie's stunning account is about war, but it is also about love--for her mother, who was killed by her father's men in retaliation for her daughter's activism; for Peter Kassig, an American medic who was killed by ISIS; and for her fellow activists, her sister Alia, and her new life and partner in the U.S. Ultimately, Mrie's story is about freedom, about imparting others with the greatest gift: an understanding of what it means to give up everything you've ever known in the name of something bigger than yourself. Like Federico García Lorca, who protesters quoted on their signs, she asks, "Can I give you my heart if it is not mine?" A fierce ode to a fight for freedom that helped a generation of Syrian artists find its voice. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.