Welcome to a bonus episode of the whole view. I'm Stacy Toth of Real Everything and I'm here each week to dive deeper into how we can find happiness and health inside and out through self-love body positivity and discovering new ways to be our best

selves. Before we get started, a reminder, this podcast is for general educational purposes

and is not intended to diagnose advice or treat any physical or mental

illness and this we're not actually focusing on direct health things but one of

the concepts that I talk about often on the show is the idea of considering community care as part of public health and how can we focus on our health if we're not safe or how other people in the world are safe.

And so today I'm excited to welcome two guests and authors to the show who wrote the book Defiant Dreams.

Sola and Malena, thank you so much for being on the show.

I am wondering, can you share a little bit about yourself and what this book is about?

We have a lot of messages and different things that will get into questions in the show,

but just to introduce listeners to your voice and a little bit about yourselves each.

Melana, do you want to start?

Sure, sounds great.

Thank you so much for having us.

My name is Melana Kapoor. I'm a junior at

Stanford University and I'm also the co-author of this book Defiant Dreams.

And I'll let my co-author Solaa, share a lot about what it's about,

because really this story is her life story of growing up in Afghanistan

and secretly educating herself.

But I think what really drew us together and drew us to this project is the idea that yes, this is Sola's story and it's the story of one girl who defied incredible odds in Afghanistan, but now it's also the story of millions of girls in the country

who are being denied an education under the new Thalaban regime, who are being denied basic human rights.

And so our real hope in working together and sharing this story is that hopefully it brings awareness

to an issue that women in Afghanistan are fighting every day,

...