Malala Yousafzai
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. As remarkable as it is that my guest Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace Prize when she was 17, there are remarkable ways she's been living her life since then. Let's start with the famous part of her story. She was born in 1997 and grew up in a remote region of Pakistan's Swat Valley near the Afghanistan border. In 2008, after the Taliban invaded her town, terrorizing the people, they banned girls' education. She publicly spoke out for her right and the right of all girls to go to school. As payback in 2012 when she was 15, she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman. She was flown to a hospital in England where she continues to live. Her recovery was miraculous.
It's when I read her recent memoir, Finding My Way, that I learned how the bullet changed the course of her life, thrusting her into a new culture and changing her in ways that didn't quite fit her public image as an inspirational hero and top student, and sometimes even challenged her own self-image. When she was admitted to Oxford University, a dream come true. She wanted to live the life of a teenager and find time to make friends, have fun, have adventures. including jumping from her dorm roof to the campus bell tower. She defied some of her culture's traditions and her parents' expectations, from how she dressed to who she married. At the same time, she was experiencing PTSD and panic attacks for the first time, recovering from her multiple surgeries and continuing to raise money for the foundation she co-founded with her father in
to advocate and raise money for girls' education in places where that is banned. All this took time from her college studies, and she felt like a fraud, a symbol of female education who was barely passing some of her classes. Another thing I learned from her book and from hearing her speak is that she's very self-aware, introspective, and funny. I spoke with her last Tuesday evening in front of an audience at WHYY where she was given this year's Lifelong Learning Award. Malala, it is such an honor to have you here tonight. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to talk with you.
It's so nice to be here.
What inspired Malala Yousafzai to advocate for girls' education?
Thank you so much. Thank you for the honor and good evening, everyone. It's always so nice to be in this beautiful, warm, welcoming city.
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?
I think it wasn't just the pressure of my parents. It was the pressure of this whole community that they feel they represent. Even though we were thousands of miles away from Pakistan, but they were still worried about what would our relatives think if they see me wearing jeans in college, if they see me with some friends enjoying some music in college or climbing a rooftop in college.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:40
2
What inspired Malala Yousafzai to advocate for girls' education?
2:40–5:44
3
How did Malala's life change after she was shot by the Taliban?
5:44–9:02
4
How did Malala navigate cultural expectations during her college years?
9:02–9:48
5
What challenges did Malala face while recovering in England?
9:48–19:18
6
What does Malala say about the pressure of defying her parents?
19:18–32:57
7
What role did Malala's father play in her education and activism?
32:57–45:30
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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