A Woman Like Her: The Story Behind the Honor Killing of a Social Media Star

Journalist Maher debuts with an immersive and eye-opening account of the 2016 “honor killing” of Qandeel Baloch, a Pakistani social media celebrity. Raised in a small village in the province of Punjab, Baloch ran away from an abusive marriage in 2009 at the age of 19 and eventually found work as a model and actress. Her social media posts, many of which were considered risqué by the standards of Pakistani culture, garnered Baloch hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Twitter followers. In March 2016, she received death threats for uploading a video promising to do “a strip dance for the whole nation” if Pakistan’s cricket team beat India; a few months later, she sparked further controversy by filming herself in a hotel room with a prominent cleric. On July 16, she was found murdered in her home. After Baloch’s brother Waseem confessed to drugging and strangling her, international news outlets hailed her as a feminist martyr. Maher enriches the narrative with accounts of other Pakistani women confronting misogyny, including a digital rights activist who teaches women how to guard against cyberharassment and the investigator assigned to Baloch’s case. Creatively piecing her story together from TV transcripts, social media posts, and interviews, Maher succeeds in exposing the hypocrisies of Pakistan’s globalized yet repressive society. Though Baloch herself remains somewhat inscrutable, this deeply researched account illuminates the qualities that made her so galvanizing in life as well as death. (Feb.)