Amal Unbound is about a twelve year old girl, Amal, working for her freedom. She has to face many obstacles and challenges. Throughout the book, there are three main obstacles that I will talk about; Her mother having a baby, and having to quit school, Enslaved by talking back in a rude manner to a master, and working her way towards freedom by solving a murder.
First Amal has to face her first challenge; quitting school and helping her family. Her sickly other has a baby girl so Amal has to quit school and take her mothers place in the family. All that at only twelve years old! Amal is crushed when her father says, “I’m sorry Amal, but this is how it has to be now. You're the eldest daughter. Your place is here.” Out of her school life into a new one.
The second challenge for Amal is when she is arguing with a powerful landlord. She was hit by the the terrifying landlord’s car. Amal later remembers how she felt “at that moment before my world changed” (48). Amal’s family is already in debt to said landlord and she wonders if she could even see her family again. She is taken away from everything she knew; her sugar cane fields, the roads, her family, her friends, and her old life.
Amal doesn't give up at all, even after she learns she might never leave the horrid Khan Family Estate. There is little hope in others, but that doesn't bring her down. There was an unsolved mystery, a light in the dark for Amal. “He and Jawad Sahib were powerful and mean-spirited men. But maybe, just maybe, even they weren’t invincible” (199). A chance to gain her freedom suddenly appears, he had killed someone and she knew his secret. She told Asif, a kind man who was her teacher at the learning center, everything. Because Asif’s father is a lawyer, Amal saved everyone from the evil Khan Family Estate.
“If I thought nothing would change, nothing ever would” (193). Even though Amal's life is very difficult she never stopped trying, so why should anybody? Things don't just happen, people need to work, and do everything they can! If Amal didn’t keep trying to gain her freedom, then where would she be? She would still be working for the Khan family living miserably.