“I am Malala” is an autobiography about Malala Yousafzai a teenage Pakistani girl who stands up for girl’s education. She is the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, but sadly after her protests he is shot by the Taliban, a group of Islamic extremists who are against girls’ education. Her memoir is split up into 5 parts each with chapters. Malala has won many prizes for her many protests and for standing up for girls’ education. Malala said “In some parts of the world, students are going to school every day. It’s their normal life. But in other parts of the world, we are starving for education… it’s like a precious gift. It’s like a diamond.” Malala’s goal is to have everyone go to school every day for free. She wants no one to starve for education. This is how she became this way.
She mainly talks about Swat Valley, how the place where Malala lives, was like before the Taliban. The first part is similar to the basics of Malala’s history. The first thing it talks about is how Malala is born. It then talks a lot about the entire lifeline of Malala’s father. It talks about his childhood speaking contests and his dream for opening a school. It says how Malala spent her young childhood growing up in the school. It also talked about how the school was suffering for a while. As Malala grew older she learned about the Taliban and how they forced men to grow beards and forced women to wear burqas in Afghanistan. Malala talks a lot about her culture. She explains how Pashtuns believe that good and bad deeds can only be repaid with actions, not expressions like “thank you”. She also explains how she thought that her friend stole her toy and she tried to steal her things for revenge. After this Malala tries to never lie or steal which has changed her very much. When the school grew and Malala saw a bunch of children looking in a garbage dump for items to sell to shopkeepers. When Malala saw this she begged her father to give them free places at the school. Since he couldn’t give them free places at the school, Malala was even more motivated to help everyone in the world get a free education.
She talks about how the Taliban came to the valley at night and did not call themselves the Taliban. She talks about how they were lead by a man named Fazlullah. He was a Muslim extremist and had an illegal radio station and was making sure everyone followed Muslim protocol. People believed him and thought he was a scholar, not a high school dropout. Malala called them “enemies of fine arts, culture, and our history”. The Taliban also stormed a police department and killed a few officers. The only thing that kept Malala going through those dark days was high school. The Taliban had also started blowing up schools which caused, even more fear. The Taliban started to kill people that they declared not properly Muslim. The army was in Swat Valley, but they didn’t truly protect the people from the Taliban. Malala wrote a diary by the name of Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu website. The U.S. army now had to do an operation to clear the entire valley of Taliban. This meant that Malala and her family had to move away for a while.
Malala talks a lot about how it is to live away from where they live. She also talks about how she was beginning to win prizes for speaking out. Her mother is worried that this will make her a target She also met many women with jobs that motivated her. By now Malala was speaking out so much she was receiving threats on her life. After a while, they are allowed back and they quickly realized that there is a “private Talibanization” despite what the army says. The new Taliban is not an organized force it is more like a way of thinking, that many people have. In the end of this part, a man boards the van that Malala and classmates are in. The man comes onto the van and fires 3 bullets. One hits Malala and as she slumps over the other two bullets hits two other girls.
Her father finds out Malala has been shot and realizes that the Taliban wanted to kill two birds with one stone. Killing Malala and silencing her father. When her mother learns about this she weeps with her sons and said, “God, I entrust her to you.” Malala was moved to a hospital called the combined military hospital and was moved to the intensive care unit. After a CT scan her doctors figured out that bullet hit a bone which shattered and splinters entered her brain. Her brain was swelling dangerously so the doctor had to do an operation to remove some skull so the brain would expand. It was a very intense operation. Afterward, Malala became stable but, she needed lots of rehabilitation which Pakistan didn’t have. So she had to be moved to Britain. She had to fly to Britain alone however because Malala’s mother couldn’t come and her father couldn’t leave his wife alone. When Malala enters consciousness she is full of fear and bewilderment the first few days as she is away from her family and in a strange place. She had to wait almost 3 weeks for her parents to come from Pakistan. She was by herself doing rehabilitation for a long time. After numerous surgeries, Malala was finally released. She even got a visit from Pakistan’s president.
Malala wrote this memoir to show that she isn’t just the girl that was shot by the Taliban, but, she is also the girl that is going to stand up to terrorism through education. She says that the way to stop terrorists is by education. Terrorists allow people to join them through ignorance. Spread education and ignorance will decrease and few people will join the cause. She talks about how she is motivated by her old life to improve the world. Her goal is to make sure that everyone is able to get a free education. Malala wrote this book so people wouldn’t think of her as the girl who was shot by the Taliban instead she wanted to be known as the girl who stood up for educational rights. I feel like this book did that and much more. She wrote a very inspirational book on how a girl stood up for education and never backed down. She taught all of her readers about perseverance and standing up for what you believe in.
