Finding My Way: A Memoir

Shangla is a district in northern Pakistan notable for its rugged, mountainous terrain. This rural district is home to about 900,000 people, mostly of the Pashtun ethnic group, with Pashto being spoken by 95% of the population. Yousafzai’s parents both grew up in Shangla, giving her a certain fondness for it.

Yousafzai explains that when she was awarded money as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, she used it to build a girls’ school in Shangla which now educates over 700 girls. Yousafzai emphasizes the region’s difficult natural setting, explaining that it was a challenge to build a school amongst the “craggy shoulders of the Hindu Kush mountain range” (75). She portrays the region as a mostly poor and conservative part of the country, writing, “Most homes in the area consist of one or two rooms, are made of mud and stones, and can’t be reached by car. Even if you somehow managed to construct a building, the parents would never allow their daughters to go to school, people warned” (75). However, the author also describes her Shangla school’s incredible success, showing that people’s impressions of the region were not correct. By dedicating her book to the girls of Shangla, Yousafzai demonstrates her ongoing commitment to her ancestral region.

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor and industrialist, established five Nobel Prizes in his will to award people who make exceptional contributions to humanity. These prizes include the categories of Chemistry, Literature, Physics, Medicine, and Peace. The winners are chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Like the other Nobel prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually.

In her work Malala Yousafzai recalls how she became history’s youngest Nobel laureate in 2014 when she co-won the prize with Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi. The two shared the $1.1 million dollar prize money. Yousafzai recalls how she used this honor to continue her activism by spending her money on a school project in Shangla, Pakistan. She writes, “When I won the Nobel at seventeen, I used the prize money to purchase land in Shangla, a remote cluster of villages high in the mountains, where my parents grew up” (74).

The shalwar kameez is the traditional clothing of Yousafzai’s Pashtun ethnic group in northern Pakistan. She describes the outfit as “billowy pants, a tentlike tunic, and a headscarf” (9). Yousafzai emphasizes how this style of clothing is intended to ensure that women are dressed very modestly at all times. She explains, “In our deeply conservative culture, a woman’s clothes must cover all skin above the wrist or ankle; garments are shapeless, giving no hint of the female form” (9).

In her work, Yousafzai explains how her mother always insisted that she wear the shalwar kameez, trying to ensure that her daughter followed tradition and that her clothing would not cause any kind of scandal in their home country. Wearing other clothes, like jeans and jackets, was forbidden, making Yousafzai’s self-styling in university a cause for uproar within her family as well as amongst some commentators in Pakistan. By discussing how she chooses to wear both shalwar kameez as well as other styles the author adds to her theme on Emancipation From Family and Tradition.