I Am Malala: Christina Lamb and Malala Yousafzai

 

I Am Malala is not just about the life of Malala Yousafzai, but also about the life of the people around her in the Swat Valley. Her father had a school and always believed that girls should have the same right to education as boys. Slowly the book moves into the situation in Swat when the Taliban started taking control. They banned music, television and also stopped girls from going to school. The life in the valley which was once peaceful slowly became full of fear and suffering. Malala explains how schools were destroyed and how even going to school became dangerous.

The book also shares how Malala slowly started speaking for girls’ education. She wrote blogs and gave interviews even though she was very young. The most emotional part of the book is when she explains the attack on her school bus and how she was shot by the Taliban because she wanted to study. Even after surviving that, she did not stop speaking. More than the story of one girl, the book gives a deep understanding about Pakistan, the Swat Valley and how extremism can destroy normal human life. At the same time it also shows how courage, education and hope can change the world.

More than a book-reading experience, it gave me the feeling of traveling through the Swat Valley and also helped me develop a great sense of gratitude for the normal life we live. This book is a journey with Malala through her time in Pakistan and Swat. The experiences and events shared about the Taliban are so cruel that they made her life, and the lives of the people around her, miserable. It shows how even a normal life became difficult to have there.

The book is full of clarity, and the details are presented precisely with proper timelines. It clearly describes how an ideology rooted in extremism can lead people to destroy one another. It is not just a journey through Malala’s life; it changes our perspective on the whole world.

Malala’s life stands as proof that education for women is undeniable and absolutely necessary. We may often take the privileges in our lives for granted, but life in Swat, and Malala’s story, shows the other side of human life one filled with misery and hardship, where people have to fight even for their basic needs.