A timely reading
After the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in October 2017 to the group, ICAN (The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), I thought that there could not be a more well-timed moment to scratch another Nobel laureate off my reading list.
"A beautiful mind is a terrible thing to waste." This quote resonates with powerful clarity around the world as we bear witness to one girl's experience.
An uplifting story of transformation, hope, and beauty. The book covers not just Malala's coming of age, but also her father's. Their stories represent the lives of so many people in the region, a young girl quietly going about her life until tragedy comes to her corner of the world and she must summon the strength to keep going and a young man, caught in the crosshairs of a sweeping ideology and seduced by the sirens to holy jihad, must find his moral compass in a shifting sea of change. Instead of bearing arms, he carves a new life: building a school and dreaming of a better life for his daughter, far removed from the misogynistic practices of his native Pashtun culture and the world the talib has financed.
Named after her namesake, Malala the Central Asian Joan of Arc, she fulfills the adage "the pen is mightier than the sword," becoming the voice and beacon of hope for millions of girls around the world who have been silenced from the ghost schools of Afghanistan to the burned-out buildings in Peshawar to the Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon to the survivors of Boko Haram to the earthquake ravaged areas of Oaxaca, Mexico. You will be outraged by the injustice of it all, and inspired by her amazing journey from outspoken critic in Swat to patient on the long road to recovery in England.
You'll be transported to a world away: reciting verses with the great masters of Pashtun literature, picnicking in fields amid the archaeological ruins of Buddhist relics, riding the colorful buses to celebrate the Eid celebration, debating Rushdie's Satanic Verses on college campus as a fatwa is decreed, gaining entry into the world of girlhood, and riding the "freedom" bus alongside these common, yet extraordinary citizens into an equal and fair future for all. Equal parts family history, personal memoir, travel narrative, and historical novel, you will laugh and cry. Witty and compassionate, it is not just one heroine's story, but a whole nation's and region's.
After reading this book, fear of what this world might like like without the participation of millions of women propelled me to take action. I made a donation to the Malala fund. Malala's story hits close to home, because like her I was fortunate to leave that world behind and create a new life in the West. Like Malala, I had the generous support of people in the West who supported me on my journey - friends, teachers, mentors, and other kindred souls who weren't afraid to live in a multicultural society. Like Malala, I know how valuable an education is and how important it is for us to support other girls who are finding a way to it. To find out what this great organization is doing around the world and donate to a worthy cause, go to https://www.malala.org.
It's not just a struggle in developing countries but here as well. Many reading programs and vital resources have been slashed in the U.S. due to budget cuts, which disproportionally affects girls from low-income areas. Girls who come from homes with strains of macho culture are the first to slip through the cracks, not getting the tutoring they need to match their peers' performance. As technology advances, so should our reading speed and critical thinking tools to make sense of the plethora of information that comes our way in the digital age.
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