From a very early age, she was conscious of the restrictions being placed on her because of her sex. She is also a devout Muslim, and has been all her life. She lives in the Swat Valley, a beautiful part of Northwestern Pakistan. She is a Pashtun, an ethnic group situated mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When she was born, few people in her community bothered to congratulate her parents, Ziauddin and Tor Pekai, because the birth of a girl is seen as a failure on the part of the parents. The book then “flashes back” to Malala’s birth. The man raises a gun and shoots Malala in the head. Malala says nothing, but her identity is obvious: she’s not wearing her burqa (female veil). Suddenly, the bus stops, and a man climbs onboard. On her ride to school, Malala thinks about how her hometown of Mingora, Pakistan has changed in the last decade, and how the Taliban (a radical Islamist group) continue to pose a threat to advocates of education and women’s rights. The book begins on October 9, 2012, as Malala Yousafzai, a teenaged girl, makes her way to school by bus.
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