{"id":4151,"date":"2026-09-01T17:20:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T00:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/?p=4151"},"modified":"2026-09-01T17:20:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T00:20:34","slug":"reading-as-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/2026\/reading-as-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading as resistance: Books to inspire one to action"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Senior Librarian AnnMarie Kolakowski<\/a> contributed to this blog<\/p>\n

Words have power, whether written or spoken. They inspire and offer hope to the oppressed and marginalized and enlighten the uninformed, but they are dangerous to those who feel threatened by them because words can divest them of power by revealing the truth and motivating people to action.<\/p>\n

History has shown us that in a totalitarian state, people have been silenced for speaking up and writings have been censored and books banned or destroyed. But history shows that in any state where personal freedom is restricted, people live in fear, and disinformation is used to hide the truth, there are ordinary men and women who are willing to question and resist regimes, institutions, and demagogues by speaking the truth. Their words expressed openly or clandestinely have in big and small ways helped return power to the people.<\/p>\n

There is much truth to the expression \u201cthe pen is mightier than the sword.\u201d Words and the ideas they convey have the power to influence, enlighten, and create lasting positive changes than brute force or military might. They can challenge the status quo, bring people together, and mobilize them toward common goals, and for this reason words are indeed dangerous in an authoritarian society.<\/p>\n

Books embody this famous quote penned by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and therefore are often targeted for censorship either through banning or physical destruction as a means of control by governments, groups of people, or individuals. An infamous example of this occurred in 1933 when the Nazis took power in Germany. Books written by Jews, communists, and writers the Nazis deemed enemy of the state and German culture were destroyed in big bonfires throughout Germany. Unfortunately, censorship such as book burning continues to be done today.<\/p>\n

However, one doesn\u2019t have to ban or physically destroy books to stifle freedom. Ray Bradbury warned, \u201cYou don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.\u201d Losing interest in reading due to apathy and indifference is just as dangerous as censorship. Books stimulate curiosity, critical thinking, and independent thought, and the act of reading is in a sense an act of rebellion.<\/p>\n

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To read is to be empowered, and in turbulent times books about resistance and moral courage can comfort and inspire us. Here are 12 books about people\u2014historical and fictional\u2014who stood up to tyranny and injustice and risked their liberty or lives to get the truth out. The stories let us imagine living in a police state or in a world where ideas and free speech are censored, freedom is restricted, and where people live in fear. They make us wonder what we would do in similar situations, and we\u2019re reminded that we can speak up. That is the power of reading.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Fahrenheit 451<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Ray Bradbury<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

The temperature at which a paper book self-combusts is between 424- and 475-degrees Fahrenheit, but many people will remember 451-degree F as the ignition point, which was popularized by Fahrenheit 451<\/em>. Book burning and state-sponsored ignorance through censorship is one of the central themes of this literary classic about a future America under agnocracy. In this dystopian society, illegal books are burned by firemen because they pose a danger to social conformity. People are placated and kept distracted from reality with televised media that function as propaganda, entertainment, and social control.<\/p>\n

Guy Montag is a fireman who begins to question the book burnings when he meets an inquisitive teenager named Clarisse whose curiosity causes him to doubt his occupation and life\u2019s purpose. The brief encounter makes him realize that he knows very little about the world and that television has suppressed people\u2019s ability to think independently and feel emotions. This epiphany sparks within him the idea of defying orders and saving books. The story unfolds as Montag begins to understand the power that books have and imagines a world where people can live without fear, think freely, and see the world through the ideas and imagination offered by books.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to imagine that even in the 21st-century we are still censoring books through banning or burning, and it\u2019s why Bradbury\u2019s novel continues to resonate with us today with its argument for intellectual freedom, independent thought, free expression\u2014and for its defense of literature.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Frederick Douglass<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

The act of publishing this autobiography in 1845 was an act of resistance in itself, sharing a former slave\u2019s story in his own brilliant words. Douglass defied a brutal system by learning to read and write and escaping to freedom, after which he faced enormous risks to travel and educate the world about the evils of slavery. He bravely identified his former owners by name, and if he had been caught, they would surely have taken their revenge. The risk was death or kidnapping and re-enslavement. His autobiography is so eloquent, too. Truly one of the great books of American literature and a must-read for every American.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Ari Folman<\/p>\n

Along with books such as Night<\/em><\/a> by Eli Wiesel, Survival in Auschwitz<\/em><\/a> by Primo Levi, and Maus<\/em><\/a> by Art Spiegelman, The Diary of a Young Girl<\/em><\/a> is canonical in Holocaust literature and is a recommended read for students of history and anyone interested in understanding the Holocaust. Published in 2018, Folman\u2019s graphic adaptation of Anne Frank\u2019s diary brings her story to a new generation with illustrations that add layers of visual meaning and emotional depth.<\/p>\n

Although abbreviated, the graphic novel captures the essence of Anne Frank\u2019s story and stays true to her original writings. It gives readers an intimate, first-hand account of Nazi occupation and persecution through the eyes of a young Jewish girl. As diaries go, Anne writes about the tight daily routines of living in concealment, lack of privacy, isolation, food shortages, and the constant fear of discovery. She was just 13 when her family went into hiding, so her narrative is also a coming-of-age story in which she struggles to find her own identity, experiences physical and emotional changes, and falls in love with the boy whose family lived with the Franks. The graphic novel explores this aspect of Anne\u2019s life, particularly her developing adolescent sexuality, which created controversy and got it banned from school libraries. Folman\u2019s adaptation reminds us that Anne Frank was a real and complex teenager and not simply a sanitized historical figure. It also reminds us of the inhumanity of war and the injustice and suffering caused by bigotry and intolerance. Through her diary, Anne Frank\u2019s own words remind us\u2014as inheritors of her story\u2014that we have an obligation to stand up to tyranny so that what happened to her should never happen to any group of people again.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Irena’s Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Tilar J. Mazzeo<\/p>\n

Excerpt from\u00a0Irena\u2019s Children<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Open! Gestapo!…<\/em><\/p>\n

There was nowhere safe to hide the lists. As the pounding on the door grew more furious and the door began to give way, she tossed them desperately to Janka:\u00a0This is a list of our children; hide it somewhere. Save it! It cannot fall into the hands of the Gestapo! <\/em>(p. 212-213)<\/p>\n

Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker in the 1940s, took great risks to smuggle Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto under the guise of doing inspections for typhus. She and her friends (including her lover who was with the Jewish resistance) hid children in coffins and among laundry, traveled through sewers and secret passages. Many of her fellow resisters were executed for their actions saving children and placing them in safe homes. Even after surviving her own arrest and torture by the Gestapo, Sendler never stopped resisting to save the list of names and protect those children, and reunite them with their families after the war. (A few were reunited though most parents were lost to the Holocaust.) This book sometimes breaks your heart with tragedy and other times rewards you with romance, resilience and hope. Sendler\u2019s true story will amaze and inspire you, and the writing will pull you in and not let go, making you feel like you\u2019re right in the middle of the action.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0Handmaid’s\u00a0Tale<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by\u00a0Margaret Atwood<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

When religion is abused and distorted by one person\u2019s interpretation to manipulate and control people, it becomes a tool for systemic oppression. The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> is about a theocratic regime that uses a corrupted version of biblical scriptures to justify a social system that strips women of their rights and autonomy. Although a work of fiction, the dystopian future the novel depicts is something that has happened many times in the past.<\/p>\n

Offred (which means \u201cof Fred\u201d because she belongs to the Commander of that name) is a handmaid whose role is to bear children in the Republic of Gilead, which is an authoritarian state ruled by elite members who have created a society based on a twisted interpretation of the Bible. Women have no rights and are forced into four distinct classes: Wives (privileged, wives of powerful men), Marthas (domestics, servants), Aunts (indoctrinators, train and discipline handmaids), and Handmaids (young, fertile women forced to bear children). Like many of the women of Gilead, Offred feels trapped in a role that was assigned to her, yet she finds silent ways to resist the repressive system, one of which is holding on to her memories and small acts of civil disobedience. When she meets a fellow handmaid named Ofglen who is part of an underground resistance called Mayday, she\u2019s asked to gather intelligence and take risks against the regime. Although she likes the idea of a rebellion, fear and basic survival prevent her from actively participating.<\/p>\n

In Atwood\u2019s novel, resistance doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be risky actions to be impactful, it can be covert personal defiance or subtle acts of individual survival. Offred shows us that remembering her real name (though it\u2019s never revealed in the novel) and preserving her memories in an autocratic society that wants to erase her identity and history is an act of resistance. Her quiet defiance in some form or another contributes to the subversion of Gilead\u2019s strict control over the handmaids\u2019 bodies.<\/p>\n

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Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Susan Reyburn<\/p>\n

Excerpt from\u00a0Rosa Parks: In Her Own Words<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI had been pushed around all my life and felt at this moment that I couldn\u2019t take it anymore. When I asked the policeman why we had to be pushed around? He said he didn\u2019t know<\/em>.\u201d (p. 31)<\/p>\n

This very thin volume boasts a wonderful array of primary source documents and artifacts, like photos, letters, court records and notes written in Rosa Parks\u2019s own hand, which together show how Rosa Parks\u2019s refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955 was not the first time she had resisted injustice, nor would it be her last.<\/p>\n

Here we see the very private, and often painful, reflections she had written in notebooks or on the backs of letterhead, about how walking the \u201ctightrope\u201d of segregation and avoiding the KKK had shaped her childhood. Warned that she could be lynched for talking back to a white person, she told her grandmother: \u201cI would rather be lynched than live to be mistreated\u201d\u2014and that fierce courage only grew stronger as Parks grew older (p. 12).<\/p>\n

Parks was an insightful, smart woman who was tired of being forced to compromise her rights and was willing to organize and work with others on ways to take a stand. We see artifacts from the work she did as secretary for the NAACP, helping to challenge unjust voter registration laws, and investigating injustice in criminal and civil cases since 1943. Items from the historic bus boycott that Parks helped organize show how she coordinated carpool drivers. And in the decades that followed, Parks never stopped protesting injustice. You can even see notes she wrote in her eighties, commenting, in her delicate cursive and sharp insight, about the things she saw happening around the world and how they brought to mind her own lived experience.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Every\u00a0Man\u00a0Dies\u00a0Alone<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by\u00a0Hans Fallada<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

This historical novel is based on the life of Otto and Elise Hampel, a working-class couple who quietly rebelled against the Nazi regime. Their story is one about individual resistance and ordinary citizens rising up against a behemoth warmongering and fascist government; it represents many of the unsung resistance fighters who fought the Nazis alone and whose names have been lost to history.<\/p>\n

When Anna and Otto Quangel learned that their only son was killed in action, they relay the tragic news to his fianc\u00e9e, Trudel. They discovered that she is part of an underground rebel faction at the factory where she works. Inspired by her actions and realizing the cruelty and the oppressive rule of the Third Reich, the Quangels decide to mount their own act of defiance. They handwrite hundreds of postcards with anti-Nazi messages and distribute them across Berlin. After two years waging their secret postcard campaign, they are betrayed and are arrested by the Gestapo, tried, and executed.<\/p>\n

In the grand scheme of things, the postcards did very little to dismantle the Nazi war machine, as most of them were handed over to authorities by frightened citizens who knew that possessing subversive materials was punishable by death. But the Quangels\u2019 actions were not in vain; they instilled fear in the Nazi leadership and caused it to divert valuable resources in finding the instigators. To paraphrase Geoff Wilkes, who wrote the afterward to the English-language edition of Fallada\u2019s book, the fact that they achieved very little success against the Nazi regime is secondary to the idea that they defeated the regime in \u201cideal and metaphysical terms.\u201d The ultimate message we can get from the actions of people like the real-life Hampels is that individual moral responsibility and personal resistance matter and that ordinary people can fight dictatorships through small, quiet acts of defiance, even when victory is impossible.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We Will Not be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement that Defied Adolf Hitler<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Russell Freedman<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

Excerpt from\u00a0We Will Not Be Silent<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The idea for the leaflet had not originated with any one person. It had evolved out of months of discussions and a growing sense of trust among a small circle of friends. All of them were repelled by what was happening in Germany. They yearned to speak freely, to be entirely themselves again. And all had been deeply influenced, each in his or her own way, by religious ideals<\/em>. (p. 41)<\/p>\n

From 1942 to 1943, \u201cLeaflets of the White Rose\u201d appeared in cities all over Nazi Germany, calling for an end to the war and asking people to put up a fight against fascism and totalitarianism. There was a nationwide manhunt for the authors, whose leaflets sharply criticized the beloved F\u00fchrer as a \u201cmass murderer\u201d and called on citizens to commit acts of treason: \u201cOffer resistance \u2013 resistance \u2013 wherever you may be, stop this atheistic war machine from running on and on, before it is too late\u2026 Don\u2019t forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure!\u201d<\/p>\n

By February 1943, the Gestapo successfully identified the leaflets\u2019 authors as Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, students of Ludwig Maximilianus University in Munich, and Kurt Huber, who was one of their professors. Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie Scholl, and their friend Christoph Probst were the first to die for spreading anti-Nazi, anti-fascist leaflets, on Feb. 22, 1943. By the end of April, most of the other students involved in the production or distribution of leaflets and their professor were also put to death or imprisoned. The youngest member of the inner circle, Sophie Scholl, was only 21 when she was executed.<\/p>\n

This book is a great entry point for learning about this true story of resistance. Russell Freedman\u2019s writing style and the photographs and documents he chose make the story come alive. The Scholl siblings in particular emerge as central characters, perhaps because in their interrogations and trial they were so strong, so adamant in their conviction that they were doing what they felt was right. The writing is accessible for teens, which is great because this is a story of teen and twenty-something college students who took it upon themselves to break their silence and register their disapproval of the crimes being perpetrated in their country\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Sidenote: I first came across this book in 2017. I spent the next seven years reading everything I could find about the White Rose. A few aspects of Hans\u2019s and Sophie\u2019s lives Freedman got incorrect\u2014though, to be fair, he was just drawing from the only available sources in English at the time he was writing this. Still, I would nonetheless recommend this book as an\u00a0excellent<\/em>\u00a0starting point for teens or adults interested in the story of the German students who defied the Nazis. It is a quick read that gets most of the important points correct, in a coherent, compelling way, with a lot of great visuals. Well worth the read.<\/p>\n

See also:<\/p>\n

Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Gordon Thomas<\/p>\n

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Kathryn J. Atwood<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Internment<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by\u00a0Samira Ahmed<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the darkest chapters in world history happened during WW2 in Germany and America where Jews and other ethnic groups and people of Japanese descent were rounded up and put in camps by the Nazis and Americans. Could such an event of this scale happen again?<\/p>\n

Internment<\/em> explores this possibility with a story about 17-year-old Layla Amin who is forced into an internment camp with her family and other Muslim Americans. It\u2019s set in the United States where an authoritarian government is using Islamophobia to persecute people like Layla and sending them to a camp out in the California desert. While her parents and much of the older generation try to endure and survive the ordeal quietly, Layla wants to fight back and coordinates a nonviolent yet dangerous resistance inside the camp. With the help of other internees, a guard, and her boyfriend, who isn\u2019t imprisoned, she smuggles messages to the outside world to expose the harsh conditions of the camp. Her secret fight for justice and freedom encourages other prisoners to speak up and ultimately instigates a rebellion against the camp.<\/p>\n

Internment<\/em> is a story that remains very relevant today as we see people being stopped and detained based on their ethnic background and culture. It highlights the problem of complicit silence that exists in our society and how it has allowed xenophobic policies based on institutionalized fear and racism to be implemented to strip people of their rights, but most importantly it reminds us to speak up and expose the injustice and bigotry that is happening all around us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>by Bradford Pearson<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

This book straddles an interesting divide between sports writing and history writing. Pearson chose a story of Japanese American youths playing football in a concentration camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, to center the wider story of how 1940s Japanese American men struggled to maintain some sense of pride and meaning in the midst of the injustice and brutality they faced in these concentration camps. Along with details of their football games, Pearson interweaves stories about how their families came to be forced from their homes and imprisoned there. Then, despite this cruel treatment, the U.S. government just expected all the men of the camp to sign up enthusiastically to join the military and fight the war\u2014and were surprised when their invitations were met with resistance.<\/p>\n

Some incarcerees expressed their anger and frustration about the camp in anonymous poems, leaflets and letters:<\/p>\n

We\u2019re trapped like rats in a wired cage,<\/em><\/p>\n

To fret and fume with impotent rage;<\/em><\/p>\n

Yonder whispers the lure of the night,<\/em><\/p>\n

But that DAMNED FENCE assails our sight<\/em>. (p. 170)<\/p>\n

Others in more open acts of resistance:<\/p>\n

On the morning of the registration, five hundred incarcerees calmly approached McDaniels and his team. They asked the lieutenant to delay registration until the questions of loyalty were answered and politely threatened to kick over the team\u2019s table if they did not comply<\/em>. (p. 180)<\/p>\n

Some men decided that despite what they suffered, they had to prove their honor and manhood by joining the military; others felt too humiliated already and wanted to join up only if they were first guaranteed a more respectful and equal footing with their fellow Americans. These men began to mount an organized campaign to resist the draft, forming groups like the Heart Mountain Congress of American Citizens and the Fair Play Committee, making very simple demands such as asking the government to clarify its notorious two-edged draft questionnaire about the men\u2019s allegiance to the U.S. or Japan. For \u201cseditious\u201d behavior related to exercising their constitutional right to assemble and air grievances, these men were imprisoned in a dingy, higher-security prison camp, but they defiantly defended their actions in court.<\/p>\n

The stories of resistance don\u2019t come until the middle of the book, and sometimes the book gets bogged down either in lengthy explanations of historical context, or sports writing. But one of the strengths of this book is the inspiring writing from the inmates themselves, like this letter written by Kiyoshi Okamoto on Feb. 25, 1944:<\/p>\n

If we are Americans by right of birth and Constitutional grant then, why our wholesale pauperization; why our evacuation, why the denial to us of the due process of law, why the deportation into another state by threat of military force, why the concentration, why the detention and why the denial to us of justice, freedom security and the other guarantees of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?\u00a0<\/em>(p. 233)<\/p>\n

Pearson gives us an important glimpse into the true lives of men crushed by injustice and trapped in a cage, who still find ways to demonstrate their strength, athleticism, intellect, courage and dignity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Animal Farm<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by\u00a0George Orwell<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

British historian Lord Acton\u2019s famous words \u201cPower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely\u201d come to mind in reading Orwell\u2019s classic about farm animals revolting against their human owners. The uprising was driven by a noble idea of creating an equal society, but what comes of this utopian vision is a totalitarian state where all the power is consolidated by the pigs who become tyrants like the humans they ousted.<\/p>\n

One night, a well-respected boar named Old Major shares with the other animals on Manor Farm his dream of a society where all the animals live harmoniously without humans. After he died, the animals stage a rebellion against the humans led by three pigs named Napoleon, Snowball, and Squealer. The owner, Mr. Jones, is chased away from his farm and the animals establish Animal Farm, modeling it after Major\u2019s vision. However, the commune begins to break away from its egalitarian principles when the pigs are corrupted by power and use their authority for personal greed rather than for the collective good. Napoleon assumes absolute control of the farm and declares that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” As he and the other pigs slowly adopt human habits, the other animals realize that they can no longer distinguish between the pigs and the humans.<\/p>\n

Orwell wrote Animal Farm<\/em> as an allegory for the Russian Revolution and the making of the Soviet Union, which had turned into a totalitarian state, and it serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving an individual or a group of people too much power, which when unchecked leads to the corruption of people and their democratic or socialist ideals. But perhaps the biggest warning it gives is that dictatorships only gain power when it can exploit people\u2019s ignorance and when people blindly trust leaders without question and choose silence over action when they see corruption and injustice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Malala Yousafzai<\/p>\n

Also available in our e-book collection<\/a><\/p>\n

Malala Yousafzai was only eleven years old when everything about life in the Swat Valley in Pakistan began to change. The Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in 2008, and they set about right away making life very difficult for people in Pakistan, banning beauty parlors and bazaars, burning TVs and computers, destroying historic Buddhist monuments, and setting up courts where public floggings became everyday occurrences. They put out propaganda saying that polio vaccines were a plot to kill or sterilize Muslim women, and that girls ought to drop out of school, publicly praising the girls who dropped out and intimidating the girls who stayed, as well as the teachers and administrators who taught them. \u201cIt felt as though the whole country were going mad,\u201d Malala Yousafzai writes. \u201cMeanwhile the authorities, like most people, did nothing\u201d (p. 125).<\/p>\n

But Malala\u2019s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, was not most people. The founder and principal of a co-ed school, he was passionate about education for both boys and girls and could not keep silent anymore. A friend of his advised him to be brave and speak up: \u201cLife isn\u2019t just about taking in oxygen and giving out carbon dioxide. You can stay there accepting everything from the Taliban or you can make a stand against them\u201d (p. 122). So Ziauddin wrote a letter to the Taliban trying to defend his schoolchildren: \u201cPlease don\u2019t harm my children, because the God you believe in is the same God they pray to every day. You can take my life but please don\u2019t kill my schoolchildren\u201d (p. 122).<\/p>\n

At first it was Ziauddin who resisted the Taliban, insisting on continuing to teach the girls at his school, giving speeches and organizing peace marches. But when a group of girls from the school were interviewed by news media about girls being forced to drop out, Malala was one of them and her voice emerged as an important one to hear. The experience made her realize that the media needed to hear girls\u2019 voices more, but other girls\u2019 parents were afraid. So Malala agreed to more and more interviews, started writing a blog under a pseudonym, and became the public face of the movement to restore education to the girls of Pakistan. \u201cIf one man, Fazlullah, can destroy everything, why can\u2019t one girl change it?\u201d Malala asked herself. Thus she found the courage to speak out about it every opportunity she got.<\/p>\n

Malala and her father both received many threats from the Taliban, and the whole Yousafzai family even had to go into hiding for a while. The country was racked by violence. Even when the violence died down and they were able to return home, life was not without threats and danger. At times, Malala\u2019s father suggested they stop speaking about education and girls\u2019 rights. But Malala replied: \u201cYou were the one who said if we believe in something greater than our lives, then our voices will only multiply even if we are dead. We can\u2019t disown our campaign!\u201d (p. 225).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this kind of courage that permeates Malala\u2019s story. Even after she was shot by the Taliban in 2012, her only regret was that she hadn\u2019t had an opportunity to speak to her attackers before they identified and shot her. For her courage, Malala has received many awards and honors, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the World Children\u2019s Prize, and the United Nations Human Prize.<\/p>\n

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Here are a few other recommended titles to inspire you:<\/p>\n

March<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by John Lewis<\/p>\n

Let it Shine: Stories of Black Women Freedom Fighters<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Andrea Davis Pinkney<\/p>\n

Defying Hitler: The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Gordon Thomas<\/p>\n

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Kathryn J. Atwood<\/p>\n

Defying the Nazis: The Life of German Officer Wilm Hosenfeld<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Hermann Vinke<\/p>\n

Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Ken Mochizuki<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senior Librarian AnnMarie Kolakowski contributed to this blog Words have power, whether written or spoken. They inspire and offer hope to the oppressed and marginalized and enlighten the uninformed, but […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-youngp","post-4151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-book-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71KTL-14X","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4151"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4193,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151\/revisions\/4193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pasadena-library.net\/adult_services\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}