A Different Kind of Daughter

Starred review from February 29, 2016
In this powerful memoir, professional squash player Toorpakai paints her personal history from her early years living as a boy in South Waziristan, a Federally Administered Tribal Area of northwest Pakistan, to her ultimate escape and triumph: under threats from the Taliban, she defies the odds stacked against women of her culture to become an international professional athlete. The harrowing details of her story include human rights abuses and shameful treatment of women, and Toorpakai’s personal account gets to the truth of the matter in a uniquely powerful way. The reader is right with Toorpakai as she witnesses murder in a shop and the execution of a young woman by stoning, or when Toorpakai’s mullah beats her for possessing even the desire to play squash and calls her a “dirty girl” for challenging traditional notions of gender. Fortunately for Toorpakai, she was born to a progressive family, Her father held liberal ideas and allowed her to live as a boy: “Not long before my fifth birthday, I became keenly aware that I wasn’t a typical tribal daughter—I wasn’t a typical girl at all.” At one point in the narrative, “I told my father in a long impassioned tirade that I wanted to wear clothes like my brother’s.... Not long afterward, my generous Baba came home from the bazaar with a pair of yellow shorts and a matching T-shirt for me to wear around the house.” Toorpakai’s story stands as a reminder of all the women currently living under oppressive regimes.

March 1, 2016
In her first book, squash champion Toorpakai recounts her remarkable life as a tomboy athlete in tribal Pakistan. There are many stories about women who overcame sexist hometowns to become sports legends, but Toorpakai's case was extreme: she grew up in Waziristan, an extremely traditional region where women are routinely stoned to death for transgressions. Yet the exhilarating first chapter shows the author defiantly burning her dresses and slashing off her long hair. Toorpakai was a born athlete, and her skills as a squash player helped her escape. But her game of choice is less important to her tale than the brutality of her homeland. Before she ever picked up a racket, the author witnessed a savage execution and several coldblooded homicides. She received a beating from a mullah and was called a "dirty girl" because she liked soccer. Toorpakai might have met a tragic fate, but her father was shockingly progressive: a gentle and good-humored professor, he encouraged his daughter to identify as a boy. "Life as a boy was beautiful," she writes, "without silk ribbons or beaded dresses or long, black braids. It was a bold and rugged beauty....It was sweat-soaked T-shirts and my brother's cast-off shorts." But as Toorpakai succeeded on the court, she roused dangerous enemies. Threatened by Taliban killers, she was rescued by Canadian squash champion Jonathan Power. Unlike so many sports memoirs, Toorpakai and co-author Holstein write eloquently about Pashtun life, and the prose is often poetic and even mystical. For the author, becoming a pro athlete has been a matter of life and death. "It's not about playing anymore, Maria," her father said just before her first tournament. "It's about staying alive." The book ends abruptly with her arrival in Canada, but it seems clear that Toorpakai's real life is just beginning. A vivid personal account of a courageous young woman standing up to one of the world's most oppressive theocracies.

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March 15, 2016
The Taliban was watching Toorpakai. The young squash player in Pakistan was breaking one of the group's cardinal rules, simply by playing, because she was a girl. So she would smuggle herself to practice in the trunk of the car, where security was in place to try to keep herand everyone around hersafe. The story of how Toorpakai, from the fractious tribal lands on the fringe of Pakistan, grew up defying the restrictive role assigned to women in her society is inspiring. With the support of her open-minded father, Toorpakai was allowed to live most of her childhood as a boy, forsaking her confining dresses for shorts and shirts and playing on the streets. But it was the game of squash, a national pastime, which captured her single-minded passion. Her determination would see her rise to become a national champion, and bring her to the attention of the terrorist group. With clarity and captivating sincerity, Toorpakai illuminates the struggles of living under the threat of violence simply because she dreamed of becoming her own champion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2016

At age four Maria Toorpakai burned her clothes, cut her hair, and with the support of her family, spent most of her childhood known as the boy Genghis Khan. This type of identity swap sounds more like the plot of a comedy than a memoir of a Pashtun girl growing up in Pakistan, where the stakes of exposure were high. Yet for many like Maria, a life of oppression is already a death sentence. An often angry child, she struggled to find an outlet for her frustrations until she discovered sports. When presented with the opportunity to play squash on the national team, she chose to do so as her true self. The consequences meant harassment from her peers and threats against her life from the Taliban. Eventually Maria would find a safe haven in Canada where she continues to compete. VERDICT This astonishing and inspirational memoir chronicles more than Maria's life; it also relates the story of her parents, an incredible couple, who, despite the odds, fought for the betterment and education of themselves, their children, and the Pakistani people. [See Prepub Alert, 11/9/15.]--Heidi Uphoff, Sandia National Laboratories, NM

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015

A professional squash player ranked 48th in the world, Toorpakai comes from Pakistan's northwest tribal region, where women have few rights and simply don't play sports. Toor-pakai managed it by living as a boy in Pesh-awar's back alleys, but when she emerged as Pakistan's top female player, the Taliban came calling. She's now Canadian-based.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.