Analysis Of I Am Malala

‘I Am Malala – The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban’ is the full title of the autobiography of a Pashtun Muslim girl Malala Yousafzai who lives in the far remote area of Swat Valley in Pakistan. The story is about her struggle to get herself educated as well as to iconize her education for the fellow girls from the Valley. She tries to expose the worst condition of the girls in the Muslim World in general and Pakistan in particular, where even they are not allowed to move outside their house without wearing Burqua. In the present autobiography she boldly expresses her views on different conditions – regional, social, political, religious, educational etc. – like a daredevil.

She begins her autobiography with the words: ‘I come from a country which was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.’(Malala 1) It is clear that as a regular autobiography, ‘I Am Malala’ is also written with flash-back method. She was assassinated by a Taliban terrorist on her way back from school and griping the point she begins to tell her story of struggle. ‘When I was born, people in our village commiserated with my mother and nobody congratulated my father’,(9) and associates her social status with her birth. She reinforces: ‘For most Pashtun it’s gloomy day when a daughter is born.’ (9) But her father is liberal in his viewpoint for woman and accepts her willingly. He even names her after the greatest heroine of Afghanistan, Malalai