Popal, Khalida. My Beautiful Sisters: A Memoir of Courage, Hope and the Afghan Women’s Soccer Team. 2025. 978-0-806-54452-6. $29.00. 210 p. Grades 9-12.

My Beautiful Sisters is Popal’s memoir of her time developing, playing for, and mostly fighting for the Afghan National Women’s Soccer Team. She details the almost insurmountable obstacles before the team as they seek recognition from a society that is more free than it was under the Taliban, but much less free under the U.S.-backed transitional government than media reports of the time conveyed. Growing up in a non-religious family where her father and grandfather respect women as equals sets Khalida apart from Afghan society, and it also sets her up to resist the indignities foisted upon her by life under the patriarchy. After suffering years of violence and abuse, Khalida is further traumatized by living in refugee camps and seeking asylum in Europe. Fortunately, she does obtain legal status just in time. As the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, Khalida must push through days of frantic phone calls and bureaucratic coordination to get as many of her players and their families out of Afghanistan as the Taliban returns to power. For simply playing soccer or allowing their daughters to play soccer, all of these people were now enemies of the state and subject to brutal public beatings or even execution.

THOUGHTS: This book will fill readers with rage and sadness, but it will also inspire them. Khalida and her sisters on the team do not overcome everything for a happily ever after ending. They have suffered and will continue to carry trauma for the rest of their lives. They have also experienced the joy of motion, play, teamwork, and even victory. Khalida is a force against the condescension and ignorance of the men in charge. Her stubbornness does not change the world, but it throws sand in the gears of a machine designed to grind women down to nothing and it is easy to cheer for her. It may also cause readers to reflect on the comparatively unlimited freedom and relative safety we have in the U.S.

796.334 Soccer