There aren’t many people who publish two memoirs by the time they are 28 years old. But then there aren’t many people who have lived as much as Malala Yousafzai. The youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Malala ran the risk of being a symbol rather than a fully-fledged person.
Her second memoir, Finding My Way, is about how she has come out the other side of a struggle to become more than the girl who was shot by the Taliban. She’ll discuss it in conversation with Natalie Portman in Paris on 2 December.
Growing Up Under Taliban Rule
Malala was just 11 in 2009, when the Taliban took control of her town in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. They imposed many rules, the most devastating of which for Malala was banning girls from going to school. Her father ran a girls’ school and Malala loved going there with her friends. Suddenly life for her and all the other girls and women of the town became much more limited, essentially to their own homes. Malala spoke out in favour of defending girls’ right to education and blogged anonymously for the BBC Urdu website about life under the Taliban. Her activism was recognised in 2011, when she was awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize and Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize.
The Attack That Shook the World
Taliban control of her area waxed and waned. Sometimes the Yousafzai family had to flee, at others they could return and schools even reopened. During one of those periods, in October 2012, a Taliban gunman boarded the bus on which Malala was returning from school and asked for her by name before shooting her in the head. She was evacuated to Birmingham in England for treatment. After a long process of treatments and operations, her family settled there.
Global Recognition and Becoming Herself
Malala was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize and she and her family started the Malala Fund to support girls’ education.
So far so virtuous. But Malala was also a teenage girl, struggling to find her own space behind the image. On top of everything else she was living in a society with very different expectations of girls’ behaviour than her family’s and culture’s.
In Finding My Way, Malala discusses her journey with honesty and humour. She went to Oxford University, living away from her family for the first time, and tried to thread a path between model student, partygoer and obedient Muslim daughter. Having sworn she would never marry, she surprised herself by falling in love. She made mistakes, had unexpected experiences, and found herself along the way.
You can get a flavour of it in this excellent podcast where Malala met South African comedian Trevor Noah.
Malala Yousafzai will be in conversation with Natalie Portman about her memoir at the Alhambra in Paris on 2 December. You can book here.
Tag(s) : "activism" "feminist icon" "Finding My Way" "girls' education" "human rights" "Malala Fund" "Malala Yousafzai" "memoir" "Nobel Peace Prize" "Oxford University" "Pakistan" "Taliban" "women's rights"
