Introduction
Malala Yousafzai was born in the town of Mingora, Pakistan to a poor but prominent Muslim family, headed by Ziauddin Yousafzai. Growing up, Ziauddin encouraged Malala to study literature and rhetoric, and to express herself freely. From an early age, Malala was conscious of the inferior position of women in her society: she was especially conscious of the difference between her mother, Tor Pekai, a woman with no formal education, and her father, a man with considerable training in writing, poetry, and oration. At the age of 11, Malala began writing a diary for a BBC blog, thanks to contacts her father had established. She also made an appearance in a New York Times documentary on life in Pakistan under the Taliban. Following these two projects,
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On her ride to school, Malala thinks about how her hometown of Mingora, Pakistan has changed in the last decade, and how the Taliban (a radical Islamist group) continue to pose a threat to advocates of education and women’s rights. Suddenly, the bus stops, and a man climbs onboard. He demands to know who Malala is. Malala says nothing, but her identity is obvious: she’s not wearing her burqa (female veil). The man raises a gun and shoots Malala in the head.
The book then “flashes back” to Malala’s birth. When she was born, few people in her community bothered to congratulate her parents, Ziauddin and Tor Pekai, because the birth of a girl is seen as a failure on the part of the parents. Malala explains more about her culture. She is a Pashtun, an ethnic group situated mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She lives in the Swat Valley, a beautiful part of Northwestern Pakistan. She is also a devout Muslim, and has been all her life. From a very early age, she was conscious of the restrictions being placed on her because of her