- Contact:
- Website
Author
Author of “A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight.”
PROFILE
Maria Toorpakai
FROM Maria Toorpakai
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
'The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight' Maria Toorpakai grew up in a lawless tribal area of Pakistan where the Taliban rules and her future was pretty much set – she’d stay at home and get married. She’d have no education, no career, no way out. But Toorpakai wanted out and she found a way. She cut her hair, dressed in her brother’s clothes, and pretended to be a boy when she was a child. As a teenager, she stopped pretending to be a boy, but she still rebelled. Despite threats from the Taliban, she eventually became an elite athlete and the country’s top ranked female squash player. Toorpakai tells her remarkable life story in a new memoir called A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight .
Recommended
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Why did Jared Kushner want a back channel with Russians? News broke Friday that President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, tried setting up a back channel between the Trump transition team and the Russian government. What are the consequences for Kushner, President Trump, and the investigation into Russian meddling?
Bookworm
Morgan Parker: There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé Morgan Parker says that the poems in her book There Are Things More Beautiful than Beyonce take a stand against the clichés of the dominant culture.
The Business
Revisiting showrunner Steven Bochco on his memoir Steven Bochco, the writer-producer behind record-breaking Emmy winners Hill Street Blues, LA Law and NYPD Blue, fought battles with everyone from out-of-control actors to network censors in his long career. He isn’t afraid to tell those tales in his memoir, Truth Is a Total Defense. This week we revisit the conversation where he shared some of his favorite stories with us.
Press Play with Madeleine Brand
Accusations of lying fly between James Comey and White House During his testimony Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey accused President Trump and other White House officials of lying when they said the FBI was in disarray and its staff had lost confidence in him. President Trump’s lawyer said Comey was wrong -- that the president never asked for his loyalty, and never asked him to back off the investigation into former NSA director Michael Flynn.