I Am Malala

I read this whole book with a lump in my throat. Even though it's historical, it's also very personal, and I had to take a break a couple of times, cause things just kept going from worse to worse, and I really didn't want to be bawling in front of a book.

It is an important book as it doesn't only talk about Malala and her family during all the changes in her country but also the History of Afghanistan and Pakistan and mainly her region Swat, since the creation of Pakistan till 2013. It talks about the development of the Taliban, how they were created by the US and Saoudi Arabia to fight off the soviets, and the role of the CIA, and how they kept growing and growing until they were ruling the region. And of course it talks about her fight to keep on going to school after the Taliban started targeting the education of girls.

It's an important book, in the way it documents how a region can go this way, how a region can be so impoverished, it can follow any helping hand, however sadistic it may be. And of course it traces the importance of education, which is mainly Malala's influence from her father, to question everything and to think for herself, not only the school system, but about not getting swept by the crowd.

It's obvious the west keep using Malala to show themselves as the saviors, when most of the problems can be traced to them, the chapters going through her operations after she was shot, shows a clear picture of how much of a political symbol her name has become, outside of who she actually is as a person. Anyway, this review is running too long, as many ideas are still running in my brain. So all in all, important book, personally and politically (as long as you don't read it to “appreciate your own life” cause that's the most self-centered thing I keep reading on here).