Was It Worth It?: A Journey of Leaving, Losing, and Becoming

By Maryam Rafiee

When intelligence agents storm Maryam Rafiee's Tehran home and assault her for refusing to surrender her laptop, she faces a question that will haunt her for years: Was fighting back worth it? Days later, immigrating to Canada with bruises still fresh on her arms, she carries this question--and many others--into exile.

In this searing memoir, Rafiee chronicles her journey from a young woman defying Iran's gender apartheid to a tireless advocate for her father's freedom. Her interconnected stories span decades and continents: ration lines during the Iran-Iraq War, secret bicycle rides through Tehran, discrimination in a Burlington grocery store, 50,000 protesters chanting "Woman, Life, Freedom" in Toronto.

This is the story of a daughter who fights to free her imprisoned father from across an ocean, a woman who discovers that even democratic countries have their own forms of discrimination, and an immigrant who must learn to carry home within herself, as it transforms beyond recognition. Above all, it's a meditation on the complicated arithmetic of freedom--where the cost is everything, but the alternative is unthinkable.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608014770
• ISBN13: 9781608014774
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"