Terry Gross

Malala, it is such an honor to have you here tonight.

I'm so excited to have the opportunity to talk with you.

So you and I, we're different generations.

We're from very different cultures.

There's so much in your book that I really related to in a much more insignificant way than your life.

But one of the things I really related to was if you're lucky enough to go to college and it's away from home,

you have a chance to figure out who you are, independent of your family, independent of the friends who knew you when you were a child.

And you can grow and transform and take risks, try out different selves and figure it out.

But that can mean defying your parents' expectations, which I had to do in my own little insignificant way, and you had to do in a pretty major way, because you were in a different culture, and you were young, you were a teenager.

And when you defy your parents, there's a price you pay.

You know, they're the people who love you most in the world, and you love them, but you're rejecting some of their values and going your own way.

And you risk hurting them.

You risk creating a rift that won't heal.

I related to that.

So my question is, which is more difficult, defying your parents or standing up to the Taliban?

And you also write in your book, and this is something I also related to, that you felt with your parents, if you didn't draw the line, that you would always be compromising and giving in.

And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this relate to that as well.

But again, we didn't have a whole culture attacking us for it.

So tell us a little bit about what your education was like, and I'll preface this by saying you describe your father as a feminist before he knew the word feminism.

And he believed in girls' education, and he wanted to teach, so he created a school that started with three students.