About this Event
Moderating this discussion is staff writer at The New Yorker Sarah Stillman. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
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ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by Feb. 12 to request.
Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]
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“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 The 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.
Photo credit: Joanna Morrissey
Loubna Mrie is a Syrian journalist, photographer, and writer, and a frequent commentator on Syrian and Middle Eastern affairs. The recipient of fellowships and residencies from Magnum Foundation, Ucross Foundation, and MacDowell, she has published work in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Nation, Time, and the London Review of Books, among others.
Sarah Stillman is a staff writer at The New Yorker whose investigative reporting explores how power and profit shape key American systems, including criminal justice, immigration, and climate policy. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the felony- M**der doctrine, and her work has exposed the economic incentives distorting punishment and governance -- from debtors' prisons and civil asset forfeiture to the exploitation of disaster-recovery workers amid the climate crisis. She's documented the human toll of deportations across multiple presidential administrations, including, most recently, shedding new light of the Trump Administration's secretive policy of deporting people to third countries to which they have no prior ties.
Stillman teaches journalism as a Professor in the Practice at Yale University, where she also directs the Investigative Reporting Lab, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to collaborative public-interest storytelling. Previously, she ran the Global Migration Project at Columbia Journalism School; her work can be found in the best-selling anthology All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, as well as in multiple Best American Magazine Writing anthologies. She is a MacArthur Fellow.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 13.61 to USD 39.15
