Finding My Way: A Memoir

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist, author and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Born in Mingora, Pakistan in 1997, Yousafzai’s childhood was shadowed by the rise of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan. When the extremist group invaded her hometown, Yousafzai documented her experiences on a blog for the BBC, focusing on how Taliban rule affected her life as a teenage girl. This work made her a target for the Taliban, who attempted to assassinate her in 2012 while she was on the bus to school.

Yousafzai’s survival story brought global attention to her ongoing advocacy for women and girls’ education. In 2014, at the age of just 17, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy, making her the youngest Nobel laureate in history. She used the prize money to fund her non-profit, the Malala Fund, an organization that advocates for girls’ rights and provides grants to projects in nations across the globe, including Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Brazil. According to the fund’s 2023-2024 report, they have already improved education for over 21 million students around the world (Malala Fund).

To date, the Malala Fund has invested over 14 million USD in girls’ education in Pakistan alone, in addition to funds invested in other countries. When deadly floods struck Pakistan in summer 2025, the organization announced additional emergency funds of over 400,000 USD to support education recovery. In announcing these funds, Yousafzai stressed that natural disasters in Pakistan hit girls hardest, as families who have lost their livelihoods often pull their daughters out of school (Yousafzai, Malala. “Malala Announces New Emergency Grants to Help Girls in Pakistan.” Malala Fund, 2025).

Finding My Way is Yousafzai’s most recent book and follows from her 2013 memoir I Am Malala, co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb. In that previous memoir, Yousafzai describes her experiences growing up in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where she joined with her father in advocating education and eventually became a target for the oppressive Taliban regime that invaded and occupied her community. In the new memoir, Yousafzai narrates a new phase of her life, as she pursues higher education in the UK, falls in love, and navigates conflicting expectations. Yousafzai is also the author of a children’s book, Malala’s Magic Pencil (2017), and co-authored the book We Are Displaced, which features the stories of women and girl refugees from around the world.

Finding My Way provides readers with a window into Yousafzai’s personal experiences as a teen and young woman, sharing the joys and struggles of becoming her own person while under the microscope of her family and the public eye. She portrays herself as a bubbly, confident, and social person whose life was interrupted by an unexpected act of violence that changed not only where she lived and studied, but who she was as a person. The shock of her injuries and overnight adjustment to a new culture left Yousafzai more serious and withdrawn—and with a weighty sense of obligation to provide for other schoolgirls around the world.