Samra Zafar

Know your worth. Don’t be afraid to claim it through languages and studying how to behave, act, or speak! Live your own life free of your parents control. Be free and abide by the rules of the language you are studying. Be different. Be closely guarded yet happy in your poetry and in studying books and languages and reading to save your way out.

Remember you have the power to choose your own life. Just as your sisters did. Just as the author eventually did.

A very bravely written and remarkable memoir about one woman escaping an abusive arranged marriage and her persistence to become empowered through a university education. Zafar's story transcends cultural differences and shows the reader how abuse festers within family and pours down from generation to generation. This was a book that was very hard to put down and I kept cheering for Zafar as she progressed along her arduous journey.