Excerpt from I Am Malala

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I was happy to pick up a copy of I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai, the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.  I’ve wanted to read this one since it came out. Malala is an amazing young woman; a brilliant girl reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time and blogging about the difficulty of getting an education as a girl in Pakistan at age 11. Her description of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto brought me to tears. I remember how exciting it was when Benazir Bhutto became the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988; reading what happened to her country after her exile was tragic. 

“If I am speaking for my rights, for the rights of girls, I am not doing anything wrong. It’s my duty to do so. God wants to see how we behave in such situations. There is a saying in the Quran, “The falsehood has to go and the truth will prevail.” If one man, Fazlullah, can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it? I wondered. I prayed to God every night to give me strength.”

I am Malala, Malala Yousafzai

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When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

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