Finding My Way: A Memoir

“Before I understood what was happening, I was thrust into an unfamiliar, unbidden life—crossing the globe to give speeches and pose for photos, spending most of my time with adults. Backstage at big events, one of them would spin me around by the shoulders and cry, ‘High energy, Malala! Give them everything!’ To these grown-ups, I was a public figure and a product to be marketed; they were blind to the awkward teenager sitting next to them, trying to do her homework.”

Yousafzai’s early experiences with activism left her feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood. By calling herself a “product” in their eyes, Yousafzai suggests that the adults who managed her did not respect her needs or perspective as a teenager. These memories depict Yousafzai as a teen who missed out on many adolescent experiences due to her obligations as an activist.

“They would bunk in the dorms and walk with me to all my classes. Anywhere I couldn’t walk, they would drive me in a bulletproof car. If I went out to dinner or a party, a few middle-aged dads in blazers and earpieces would be there too. Just what every college girl wants, I thought. I was grateful for their protection and understood it was necessary, but I hoped they wouldn’t create a barrier between me and the other students.”

The author explains how her security team accompanied her everywhere during her college studies. This passage gives the reader insight into how Yousafzai’s life continues to be circumscribed by the Taliban’s violent actions against her.

“After the Diwali Ball, my excitement for college life bordered on mania—I wanted to try everything. I combed through upcoming campus events, adding as many as possible to my calendar. There’s a saying that every Oxford student knows: ‘College is study, sleep, and social life—but you can only pick two.’ It didn’t take long to decide that one was enough for me.”

Yousafzai uses self-deprecating humor to convey the degree to which she prioritized her social life above other concerns early in her university career. This choice arises from her sense that she has missed out on social opportunities throughout most of her life thus far. Despite The Pressures of Activism, she was determined to carve out the freedom to explore her growing identity.

“Jeans are not a crime against Islam and not wearing a shalwar kameez didn’t make me any less Pakistani. But too often in my home country, women’s bodies are used to measure the strength of our religious beliefs and national identity. Challenge the social norms created and enforced by men, and you disgrace your family and community. That morning, it meant that the patriarchy had grown so fragile that it could be threatened by a pair of jeans.”

Yousafzai confronts the Pakistani criticism of her clothing, noting the sexism of a tradition in which men appoint themselves the arbiters of decorum for women. By challenging this behavior with her words and actions, the author adds substance to her theme on Emancipation from Patriarchal Tradition.

“When I was in Birmingham, my dad treated our house like an art museum and me like the signature piece in the collection. In his mind, no one would go to the Louvre without seeing the Mona Lisa; the least I could do was give our visitors an autograph, a selfie, and a couple of hours of polite conversation. I half expected to come home one day and find our small vestibule converted to a gift shop featuring key chains and postcards with my face on them, maybe a Malala-themed umbrella or snow globe.”

Yousafzai’s memories of her father’s visitors reveal her frustration with having to engage with the public even in her own family home. By comparing herself to Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—a prized piece of Renaissance art—the author suggests that she felt objectified and misunderstood by her father as well as his curious visitors, who all wanted a piece of her.

“Wearing jeans was one thing, but a college romance would make me a pariah in the eyes of my people. If I had explained all this to my friends, I knew what they would say: Those views are archaic and antifeminist! You are an adult woman in a free country with the power to make your own decisions! They would be right—but that didn’t mean I could live as I pleased. Dating wasn’t worth the potential damage to me, my family, and my work.”

Yousafzai’s decision to delay dating and romance reveals her deep worry at causing scandal and conflict amongst her family and her native culture. The author’s reflections on how her personal life could affect her professional goals add substance to her theme on The Pressures of Activism.

“The constant, widespread denial of what had happened to me was a second assault, leaving wounds that wouldn’t heal…It felt like I had to live my life as if I were on trial, trying to prove myself to people who had already judged me guilty.”

Yousafzai sadly remembers how some conspiracy theorists in Pakistan spread rumors that the Taliban’s assassination attempt was staged. The author’s feelings on this topic add depth to her theme on Coming of Age Amid Conflicting Cultural Expectations, as she shows how commentators across the world dissected her experiences and actions, often offering baseless criticism.

“What I loved most was that none of these differences kept us apart—everyone was welcome and treated like family, no matter their background or beliefs. That heaviness inside me, the fear of engaging with people from my home country, started to fade away. I began to think of the last five years not as a lonely era of my life, but as a time when I stored up friendship and love, waiting to bestow it on these exact people.”

The author recalls befriending fellow Pakistani students while at Oxford and realizing that they were welcoming and open-minded people. This passage shows how Yousafzai’s social life was transformed thanks to her new, positive connections at university. By describing how her new friendships helped her to interact with her native culture more positively, the author adds detail to her theme on Coming of Age Amid Conflicting Cultural Expectations.

“No one had bothered to think at all about my brothers’ clothes. My outfit, my hair, my shoes, my scarf would all be described and dissected in newspapers and Facebook posts across Pakistan. But they were boys—it didn’t matter what they wore because their bodies would never be a cause for scandal or shame.”

While Yousafzai’s brothers were not expected to think about how they dressed on the family’s trip to Pakistan, the author herself was carefully presented at all times. By challenging the double standard between men’s and women’s clothing and appearances, the author portrays expectations of women as unfair. This discussion adds to her theme on Emancipation From Patriarchal Traditions, as the author persuades the reader to agree that men and women should be held to the same standards.

“Before I had time to think it over, I was creating an Instagram profile with a fake name and filling it with pictures of male bodybuilders, virtual bodyguards for me to hide behind. Then I messaged the man who’d written that he wanted to murder me.”

The author reveals that as a teenager, she engaged directly with hateful online commentators who threatened her. This quotation shows how the Taliban’s violence against Yousafzai did not end with her time in hospital, but created ongoing threats and criticism which she has had to cope with ever since. This revelation depicts the author as a teen experiencing an extreme version of the psychological harms of social media that impact other teens, compounded by The Pressures of Activism.

“Talking with Moniba, I came to believe that we were equally affected, just in different ways. My body carried the scars, but I had no memory of that day. Five years later, my best friend still had nightmares.”

The author’s conversation with her childhood best friend, Moniba, reveals how their shared traumatic experience affected them differently. This passage adds nuance to Yousafzai’s exploration of mental health and the consequences of the Taliban’s violence against women and girls.

“At Oxford, I could be myself, free from the expectations of the outside world. My friends didn’t care about my thoughts on global events or what I wore. They accepted my quirks and contradictions, my bad days and chronic tardiness. Sometimes when they saved me a seat at dinner or laughed at my jokes, I tried to hide the swell of gratitude in my heart. I knew it wasn’t normal to show so much intensity or say out loud how much I loved them. Though I never told them, their friendship made me feel that I’d finally come back to life.”

Yousafzai reveals The Pressures of Activism in her reflections on her close friendships. By contrasting the criticism and high expectations of being in the public eye with the easy acceptance she found among her friends, the author portrays her social life as the perfect antidote to too much time spent working in the spotlight.

“I started to have new worries as well. If he actually does like me, then what? Dating was forbidden, so would I have to keep our relationship a secret indefinitely? Was I falling in love? Or was I about to ruin my reputation? Both?”

As Yousafzai began her relationship with then-boyfriend Asser Malik, she worried about causing a scandal that could threaten her advocacy work. By connecting her personal decisions to her professional goals, the author bolsters her theme on The Pressures of Activism, pitting her growth as an individual against the efficacy of her work.

“I had tried to force my eyes open, to see something other than this carousel of horrors. Inside, I screamed; outside, my lips stayed closed, motionless. I was awake and buried alive in the coffin of my body.”

Yousafzai recalls her terrifying experience while smoking marijuana, which prompted traumatic memories of her shooting. By emphasizing her helplessness and distress, the author vividly describes her fear and helps the reader understand how this experience prompted a new phase of anxiety.

“Asser’s arrival vanquished the dark clouds that had hung over my third term at Oxford, but it wasn’t exactly the carefree summer romance of rom-coms, as I worried a lot about getting caught. When we were together, it was hard for me to turn off premonitions of being publicly shamed in Pakistan for having a boyfriend. I agonized over what would happen to the Shangla girls, imagining their parents pulling them out of our school over my carelessness.”

The author expands her theme on Coming of Age Amid Conflicting Cultural Expectations by describing her inner conflict over her romance with Asser. By describing her relationship as something she could be “caught” at, the author emphasizes how taboo dating is amongst some people in Pakistan. Her decision to continue dating Asser in spite of the potential for criticism shows that, in the end, Yousafzai refused to be confined by others’ beliefs.

“I have heard of people snapping or breaking, seeming to shift in an instant from a sister or friend into a stranger. But I lost my mind in pieces. My grasp on reality. Hope for the future. My faith in my friends. The sense of peace I felt watching the sun rise over the river or hearing Asser’s voice on the phone. The ability to control my own body. That autumn, I lost them all.”

This passage describes Yousafzai’s difficult final year at Oxford as traumatic memories, sleep deprivation, and academic stress took a terrible toll on her mental health. The author’s painful memory of her crisis communicates the gravity of her situation, helping the reader understand her state of mind and her decision to seek help.

“When doctors suggested I continue to see a counselor after leaving the hospital, my dad declined. ‘Only a completely nonfunctioning person needs a therapist,’ he said. ‘Malala is fine.’ My parents were raised to ask ‘What will people say?’ in every situation and choose the option least likely to embarrass or shame their families. He thought he was protecting me. But was I a functioning person now? A kitchen knife had brought me to my knees.”

This passage provides context on Yousafzai’s previous experiences in therapy and why it took years after her shooting to seek help. The author explains her family’s perspective on therapy and points to the stigma of seeking mental help in her native culture. By choosing to see a therapist, the author took her health into her own hands.

“Covid was new and scary—they had no other choice. But I couldn’t help but feel stunned and heartbroken at the loss. I would miss the warm weather months with my friends, walking down to the river in my pajamas at sunrise, climbing up to the bell tower at night, post-exam parties and tearful good-byes. For the third time in my twenty-two years, I’d been forced out of a place I loved and a life I was building for myself.”

Yousafzai recalls her sadness when the pandemic closed her university campus, preventing her from enjoying the last few months of her degree at Oxford. She compares this sudden change to other abrupt changes, such as her evacuation from Mingora during the Taliban invasion, and the assassination attempt that transformed her life, suggesting that the shock of the pandemic affected her on a similar level.

“That’s when I realized: I won. From the time I was a girl, I had carried this dream of graduating from university, even when I didn’t know a single woman who had done it. I won’t be a teenage bride and spend my life wondering what I could have contributed to the world, I had told myself. I will go to college. The Taliban had forced me out of school when I was eleven years old and tried to kill me when I was fifteen. With bombs and guns, they’d fought against little girls who only wanted to learn, to understand the world around them.”

Yousafzai’s graduation from university was a huge personal triumph and the realization of a childhood dream. By reminiscing about the origins of her goal and its unlikely nature given where she grew up, the author communicates the magnitude of her achievement.

“Asser knew it too, though I think he hoped I would find the courage to follow my heart. But I couldn’t do it. If we lived together without getting married, my parents would stop speaking to me, at least for a while. People would inevitably find out about us, and all my work in Pakistan would go up in flames. It was too big of a risk. There were only two options—get married or let him go. I hated them both.”

The author’s ambivalence about marriage made her question her relationship with Asser, since she felt that living with him outside of marriage would jeopardize her family relationships as well as her work commitments. By showing the strain of these expectations, the author deepens her theme on The Pressures of Activism.

“‘You’re already a good partner, Asser. Things are great between us, but I still don’t know how I feel about being a wife.’ ‘So…you’re saying that I just need to find a way to reverse about five thousand years of patriarchy and social norms around marriage…and then we can be together?’ I rolled my eyes at him. ‘For you, I’ll try anything,’ he said.”

The author’s conversation with Asser about marriage and sexism shows how he patiently reassured her about her concerns. This dialogue uses irony to generate humor and convey the daunting nature of Coming of Age Amid Conflicting Cultural Expectations. Equality in heterosexual marriages always requires overcoming ingrained patriarchal norms, but the strictness of patriarchy in Yousafzai’s Pashtun tradition makes this challenge even more significant.

“When I woke up the next day, though, no one was celebrating. #ShameOnMalala was trending in Pakistan, as people had decided that my comments on marriage were ‘lewd,’ ‘un-Islamic,’ and an ‘assault on the foundations of society.’ They claimed I was encouraging adultery, and seized on the word ‘partnership,’ as if equality between men and women was unnatural and profane. Thousands upon thousands of tweets were calling me an atheist, a prostitute, a foreign agent intent on destroying the country, everything but what I really was—a twenty-three-year-old asking questions about love and relationships.”

Yousafzai recalls the outrage amongst some Pakistanis when her Vogue interview was released and she was shamed for comments that questioned the necessity of marriage. By explaining the hateful discourse aimed at her, this passage adds to the author’s theme on Coming of Age in Amid Conflicting Cultural Expectations, as she did not feel the freedom to express herself like a regular 23-year-old without social consequences.

“After all, these rules weren’t handed down by God. If people create culture, they can also change it. I wanted my community to see that men can show affection for their wives, that devotion and love are the highest forms of honor.”

At Yousafzai’s wedding, she continued to push the envelope against her family and community’s expectations. By describing why she chose to share an affectionate photograph of herself and her new husband, the author adds to her theme on Emancipation from Patriarchal Traditions, suggesting that her own emancipation could encourage others to adopt the same attitudes and slowly shift cultural norms altogether.