Last to Eat, Last to Learn My Life in Afghanistan Fighting to Educate Women

From young Afghani activist and Amnesty International Global Youth Ambassador Pashtana Durrani, a deeply inspiring memoir about the power of learning and the value of educators in their many forms – from teachers, mentors, and role models, to fathers, mothers, and any one of us with the drive to stand against ignorance…

A Ms. Magazine Pick for Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023

“Pashtana’s story highlights the resourcefulness and bravery of young women in Afghanistan. I hope readers will be inspired by her mission to give every girl the education she deserves and the opportunity to pursue her dreams.”—Malala Yousafzai

Inspired by generations of her family’s unwavering belief in the power of education, Pashtana Durrani recognized her calling early in life: to educate Afghanistan’s girls and young women, raised in a society where learning is forbidden. In a country devastated by war and violence, where girls are often married off before reaching their teenage years and prohibited from leaving their homes, heeding that call seemed both impossible and dangerous.

Pashtana was raised in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan where her father, a tribal leader, founded a community school for girls within their home. Fueled by his insistence that despite being a girl, she mattered and deserved an education, Pashtana was sixteen when, against impossible odds, she was granted a path out of the refugee camp: admittance to a preparatory program at Oxford. Unthinkably and to her parents’ horror, she chose a different path. She chose Afghanistan.

Pashtana founded the nonprofit LEARN and developed a program for getting educational materials directly into the hands of girls in remote areas of the country, training teachers in digital literacy. Her commitment to education has made her a target of the Taliban. Still, she continues to fight for women’s education and autonomy in Afghanistan and beyond.

Courageous and inspiring, Last to Eat, Last to Learn is the story of how just one person can transform a family, a tribe, a country. It reminds us of the emancipatory power of learning and the transformational potential that lies within each of us.

A portion of proceeds from Last to Eat, Last to Learn will be donated to LEARN (LearnAfghan.org), the NGO dedicated to providing quality education and healthcare to communities in conflict zones.

Pashtana Durrani is an Afghan education advocate, founder of the NGO LEARN, Malala’s Fund Education Champion, UN’s Youth Envoy, and Amnesty International Global Youth Collective representative. After the fall of Kandahar, and later the rest of the country, Pashtana became a face of disappearing women’s rights in Afghanistan, appearing regularly in national press and on all major US networks. She currently lives in Boston, where she is a visiting fellow at the Wellesley Centers for Women and continues her research to help Afghan women and girls pursue education and support the health of Afghan mothers and babies. Learn more at LearnAfghan.org.

Tamara Bralo is an award-winning journalist who worked for BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera English, and spent years covering war zones around the world; including Iraq, Libya and Syria. An advocate for safety of journalists, and a first woman in charge of High-Risk Deployments for any major network; she currently works as a media consultant for safety and investigative reporting; and for Undivided, an NGO promoting women’s perspectives and narratives of war. Tamara spent an inordinate amount of time covering Afghanistan over the years. She holds an MA from Syracuse University in International Relations, and lives in Washington DC.