Last Updated on April 18, 2021 by themigrationnews
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Author: Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Reviewer: Fabrizio Parrilli
Yousafzai, Malala. 2014.
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.
United Kingdom: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
ISBN: 978-0-29787-091-3.
PP.288
“I am Malala. My world has changed, but I haven’t. “
Malala is a world-changer and her book is an autobiography that made her a global female icon, an international symbol against the subjugation of women. Malala challenged an oppressive system rooted in a society that does not allow women and girls to be educated, and her commitment to ensuring rights nearly cost her life.
Swat Valley, Northern Pakistan, 9th October 2012. Malala is only fifteen and the thoughtless nature of her age is ripped away from her in an instant. She has just left school, her exams are over and as usual, she gets on the old bus that takes her home together with her friends. Suddenly the bus comes to an abrupt stop with an unknown man getting on the back of the bus and shoots three bullets hitting her in the face, leaving her dying. This will be only the beginning of a long, arduous journey that will make her, her parents, and two younger brothers leave their homeland. After the life-threatening attack, Malala is immediately hospitalized in Pakistan and then transferred to the United Kingdom where she, still today, lives with her family. In the meantime, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and were ready to hurt Malala or one of her family’s members again, and even vowed to destroy all the schools that allow girls’ attendance.
Malala’s only fault has been to raise her voice for gaining the right to freedom and education for women. At the age of eleven, she decided to write a blog on the BBC website, where she starts talking about her life as a schoolgirl under the Taliban regime in the Swat Valley in Pakistan, which considered her a threat: indeed, according to their notions of the society, women were considered inferior creatures whose main role is to stay at home making meals for the men and raising children, going out only if accompanied by a male relative, without the possibility of studying, dancing and singing. The Taliban are fundamentalist Sunni Muslims, mostly from Afghanistan’s Pashtun tribes, who dominate a large part of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s territories which are used to recruit young vulnerable people as terrorists. The Taliban seek to establish a puritanical caliphate that neither recognizes nor tolerates any version of Islam divergent from their own, and of course any other religion. It is possible to notice an oxymoron within the term “Taliban” itself as it derives from the Arabic word Talib which means student”.
Despite suffering serious injuries, Malala has become even stronger and braver, and since then she has not stopped spreading awareness about the inalienable right to education, in particular for women. She has always been curious and has always desired to study: for her, knowing how to read and write is essential, and knowledge is as important as eating and breathing. She has had the great opportunity to attend a school thanks to her parents: her father was engaged in the social sector and in the foundation of a school, for both boys and girls, succeeding with great efforts and sacrifices; while her mother, despite not having the opportunity to study, did not prevent her from following her path and dreams.
The book presents the biography of a special and courageous girl, who fought for an ideal for which she was willing to do anything, even to risk her young life. ‘I am Malala’ is a text which is a testament to a young girl’s resistance and resilience, it marks you inside indelibly. She helps us understand that very often we take the right to education for granted in a world where millions of children do not have access to it, where they are compelled to stay at home or struggle seeking food and water.
Another important aspect you will find while reading her book is that we often forget that leaving our own country, forcibly, becomes the only alternative between the opportunity to survive and die. Malala reminds us how privileged a lot of us are in not having grown up in countries ravaged by wars and conflicts.
Certainly, Malala presents before us a precious testimony of a child, a girl, a woman, a migrant, a refugee forced to leave her homeland only because of an oppressive regime that, through the use of violence and denial of fundamental rights, does not recognize the right of women to gain an education. Nevertheless, she has always had the desire of going back to her country. When thinking about the hardships refugees undergo, we think of their physical journeys, but the emotional cost is equally difficult. Malala acknowledges that while she feels grateful to the United Kingdom for welcoming her family, she also misses her friends, the Pakistani tea, the Pashto has spoken in the streets, the beauty of the Swat Valley.
Currently, in exile in Birmingham, Malala has just realized her dream, perhaps the biggest one, the one she fought and risked her life for she graduated in philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford last year. For her braveness and fight for freedom to seek education, Malala has been awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest winner ever, together with Kailash Satyarthi, 60, an Indian activist who has been involved in defending children’s rights since the 1990s, particularly in India. Today Malala goes around the world to tell her story, the story of this girl who has only one purpose: to bring justice and hope to a land where there is none.
Moreover, what is remarkable is that Malala never takes pride in what she does, telling her story with humility and simplicity, convinced that what she has done and it continues to do is simply necessary, a duty towards every girl and woman stuck in regimes of terror.
The book is a constant reminder of the enormous disparity in privileges that exist for people living in different parts of the world. It can be an important text to be read by all children and students at school, perhaps in the first years of high school, so that they develop empathy for fellow human beings even if they come from a different society and culture. It might serve as a vital read for adults as well so that they realize that the prejudices we have towards other cultures are just irrational and that there are men and women who fight every day against the absurd impositions of extremist groups.
Malala’s book has been acknowledged by the academic and humanitarian community as a powerful weapon for demanding human rights which also makes us reflect on the larger socio-political discourses which make such reigns of terror still possible. It emphasizes the importance of gaining knowledge as a tool that allows people to be free, to think and choose freely, and not to be afraid.
However, the mass media in the Global North has been depicting her story through a certain prejudiced lens which represents her as a vulnerable young girl who has been just a victim of patriarchy and religious dogmas, without focusing on the role of global politics in fermenting these oppressive regimes. Women and girls in Pakistan are still largely viewed through the oriental gaze which confines them and their society to notions of victimhood, extremism, and corruption (especially after 9/11). However, many feminist scholars and experts have demanded of them to pay closer attention to the multifaceted social, cultural, political, material, historical conditions in which women live in Pakistan.
Malala’s advocacy and activism exemplify a growing trend across the Muslim world: how women and girls have been contributing to the transformation of Islam as a force for peace and progressive change. She has set before us an example, along with many others, of a young woman who has put her ideal in the foreground to reemphasize that education belongs to everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, age, and political orientation.
Fabrizio Parrilli, Master’s degree Student of International Cooperation on Human Rights at the University of Bologna, Italy E-mail: parrillifabrizio@gmail.com