Orange, California
On Wednesday, 28 October 2026, Ezidi author, human-rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad returned to Chapman University in October for a public conversation about her new memoir, I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism.
Murad spoke with Jennifer Keene, Dean of Chapman University’s Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, as part of the university’s 2026 “Engaging the World” programme.
While Murad’s first memoir, The Last Girl, documented her captivity under ISIS and the Ezidi Genocide of 2014, her new book focuses on the life that followed: rebuilding, making personal choices, maintaining family relationships and refusing to be defined only by what she survived.
Murad discussed the pressure many survivors face to fit society’s image of a “perfect victim.” She described being told that she should not smile, wear colourful clothes or use makeup because people expected a survivor to always appear visibly sad.
The discussion addressed a central message of her new book: surviving atrocity does not remove a person’s right to joy, privacy, self-expression or an ordinary life.
Murad also spoke about the women in her family, including her mother and her niece Katherine, whose memory continues to shape her work. She said that telling these stories is a way to honour women and girls who were murdered or never had the opportunity to share their own experiences.
Following the event, Murad signed books and met members of the university audience.
The discussion placed Ezidi survivor testimony within a wider cultural conversation about authorship and control over one’s own story. Through I Choose My Beginning, Murad presents herself not only as a genocide survivor and advocate, but as a woman continuing to build a life on her own terms.
