Defiance

An unprecedented account of resistance from a young Syrian woman who risked everything to rebel against the authoritarian regime - and her own family
Loubna Mrie was raised a staunch Syrian Alawite. The Alawites, an insular ethnic group, lived under oppression until 1970, when a coup saw Hafez al-Assad seize total power in Syria. Loubna's grandfather helped plan this coup, her father was an enforcer and assassin of the Assad regime, and her community revered the new president with a near-religious devotion.
Yet when the Arab Spring reached Syria in 2011, Loubna found herself at an anti-government demonstration and was forever changed by what she witnessed. Her jeans splattered with fellow protesters' blood, she plunged into a life of activism, becoming a traitor to both the regime and her abusive father. The consequences were horrifying.
Defiance is a searing, ground-level view of survival and resistance at the flash point of the most visible and least understood war in recent history, only ending in 2024. And it is told from a perspective that is rarely considered, let alone heard - that of a Syrian Alawite woman.

Mrie is a photographer, journalist and writer who covered the Syrian war as a photojournalist for Reuters from 2012 to 2014. Currently based in Oakland, she is a frequent commentator and has been published in Time, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Nation and Vice among others.