|
|
The South
Asian Life & Times - SALT |
|
|||
|
Contents Adventure
Art
-
Dongria Kondh
|
|
||||
|
I AM MALALA The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by
the Taliban I Am Malala is the
courageous memoir of Malala Yousafzai, a Pashtun girl from Pakistan’s Swat
Valley, born of an illiterate mother, who read Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief
History of Time” by age 11.
Co-written
with British journalist Christina Lamb, it begins with Malala's drive home
from school on that fateful day in October 2012. "Who is Malala?" shouted a
Taliban fighter as he jumped onto a school bus. The school girls, who were
travelling home from school, did not answer.
But
everyone in the valley knew who Malala was. Fifteen-year-old Malala
Yousafzai, had campaigned passionately since the age of 11 for the right of
girls to have an education. She was shot in the head at point-blank range
for speaking out about her right to attend school. Disfigured beyond recognition, Malala was first
rushed to Peshawar, then finally sent to Birmingham, England, “where doctors
reconstructed her damaged skull and knit back the shattered face.” A competitive teenager, who once blogged for BBC
Urdu under the pen name Gul Makai , Malala was feted around the globe for
her intelligence, conviction, and bravery, and became the youngest-ever
nominee for the Nobel peace prize. She now lives in the UK, attends school there, and
has recently been awarded the International Children’s Peace Prize for her
inspirational work and courage. The Malala Fund, led by Malala herself, has
been set up to support the fight for girls’ rights to education. However, the book also
reveals her father’s exceptional courage and his belief in the right of
every child to education. He struggled to found a school and named his
daughter after Malalai of Maiwand, the “Pashtun
Joan
of Arc, who gathered Afghan men in 1880 to defeat the British, losing her
own life in the process,” and raised her like a son. Despite the Taliban
infiltration in her hometown, Malala would go to school with her books
hidden under her shawl. She continued to study and excel, eventually giving
public speeches on behalf of education that her father would help write.
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2000 - 2014 [the-south-asian.com]. Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. |
|||||