Beyond the Myth of Malala Yousafzai
Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai (Atria Books, 2025)
Reviewed by Sarah Linville
“I’ll never know who I was supposed to be,” Malala Yousafzai opens her most recent memoir, Finding My Way. And, for the most part, this is true. Malala’s life was irrevocably altered when a member of the Taliban boarded her school bus in 2012 and attempted to assassinate her. Her survival and recovery thrust her onto the world stage, where she became the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
As her first memoir, I Am Malala (2013), recounts, Malala was a well-known activist for girls’ education in Pakistan before her encounter with the Taliban. And in other ways, too, Malala’s life before and after the attack is similar. She continued to fight with her siblings, to struggle with conflicting desires to please her parents and express herself, and to enjoy time with friends above all else. After her recovery, she continued to make speeches and advocate for what she believed in, just on a much bigger stage.
Finding My Way attempts to reconcile those two identities—that of the prolific activist and that of the normal teenage girl adjusting to college life and first love. In her introduction, Malala writes that after her attack the media painted her as some sort of “mythical heroine,” and “people began to describe someone I didn’t recognize—a serious and shy girl, a wallflower forced to speak out when the Taliban took away her books” (6).
The reality was much different for Malala. She writes, “Growing up in Mingora, I was a troublemaker. At school, I ferried bits of gossip back and forth between groups of girls and cracked jokes that made my friends laugh and scold me in the same breath” (7). Finding My Way works to reintroduce the world to the ‘real” Malala, including some of the most exciting and most challenging parts of her life after leaving Pakistan. The result is an intensely readable piece that is equally relatable and inspiring.
Some of the most enjoyable parts of Malala’s memoir are her most ordinary moments. For example, she is the definition of the overexcited college student when she arrives at Oxford. Just before attending Oxford’s famed “Fresher’s Fair,” where all the clubs and societies host sign-up tables, she expresses her anxiety about making friends. “Now was the time to get serious about meeting people. It’s everyone’s first day. This isn’t high school. I don’t need to hang around waiting for someone to talk to me” (17). When she approaches a fellow PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) student, Cora, for the first time, Cora is understandably taken aback by Malala’s celebrity for a moment, but after moving past this “brain freeze,” the two become fast friends (18). Malala soon signs up for more clubs than anyone could reasonably expect to attend, including the Islamic Society, Christian Union, and the Hindu Society: “I may have heard a rumor that the Christians brought baked goods to your dorm room, and the Hindus threw the best parties” (19). Malala’s excitement to embrace all aspects of college life is a clear reminder that, despite her status as a Nobel laureate, she was also a typical teenage girl.
Malala was also a typical college student in that the constraints of her budding social life made studying difficult. After realizing that she never received the summer homework she was supposed to do before matriculating at Oxford, she attempts to lock herself in the library for the weekend leading into the first week of the term. However, as soon as she hears students walking to dinner outside the window, she thinks, “It’s only Friday. Plenty of time to catch up over the weekend. I tossed the books and papers in my bag, and abandoned the ship,” just as any other teenager would (26).
On the other hand, there are many reminders of Malala’s less-than-typical life woven throughout the memoir. Her trip to the Fresher’s Fair ends with Malala looking up to see her own face on the Oxford Union’s advertising banner, as she had spoken at one of their famed debates a few years ago. To reclaim more of her time to study, she asks her adviser for a letter explaining that she is prohibited from working during term time, which she can show to her father and to the staff at The Malala Fund to get out of speaking engagements. In her early relationship with her soon-to-be-husband, she is very careful to avoid high-traffic spaces, because being photographed alone with a man would be culturally catastrophic. One of the most troubling points of the book is when she experiences PTSD symptoms after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, when she is forced to reckon with the atrocities that women in that country will now face at the hands of the people who attempted to kill her.
Malala’s tone throughout these stories can best be described as honest. She reveals the marks she received at the end of her time at Oxford (second class, upper division, which roughly translates to a B+ average in the U.S.). Her love of learning as she works to recover from her difficult first year is infectious, and her academic success at the end of her degree is proof that hard work and focus can pay off. She shares that it was smoking marijuana that caused her first bout of PTSD, despite the negative responses she may face because of this honesty. She recounts embarrassing stories of trying to woo her first crush. She talks about struggling to honor her Pashtun culture and push beyond its more constraining aspects, especially during the courting process. However, she still keeps many aspects of her life private. For example, while she shares more about her mother in Finding My Way than she did in I Am Malala, she still keeps much of her mother’s perspective private, honoring the fact that she does not even want to be photographed with Malala due to her cultural and religious values. By the end of the memoir, readers feel like they really know Malala, but there are still questions that go unanswered. In an age where memoirs are often spaces of oversharing, Malala’s balanced take is refreshing.
It is also notable that, before the age of 30, Malala has written two autobiographical works, as well as a range of children’s books that explain her story in more age-appropriate ways. While her early work does an excellent job of harnessing her story to do good in the world, Finding My Way invites readers to a more intimate seat at her table. It also allows space for her to share the long-term aftermath of her traumatic experience and the celebrity that came with it without artificially extending her time in the spotlight. Malala is still very much a voice for girls’ education around the globe, and her memoir is a triumphant reminder that the Taliban’s effort to silence her in actually amplified her voice.
And so, in Finding My Way, Malala dismantles the myth that has grown around her. She is at once the activist who can call in favors from Erna Solberg and Hillary Clinton and at the same time the student struggling through economics tutorials at Oxford. Above all, Malala reminds readers why education matters and why its denial to millions of women around the world remains an injustice that should provoke both outrage and action. The intellectual and personal growth she experienced at Oxford and what she has achieved since are clear reminders of what is at stake: how many would-be Malalas are out there, denied the right to find their way because they are not allowed to go to school? By showing readers this truth through both the ordinary and extraordinary moments of her life, she invites all readers to join in that cause.
Sarah Linville earned her bachelor's in English and secondary education at Palm Beach Atlantic University and her master's in English and American studies at the University of Oxford. She has taught English in Palm Beach County, in Spain on a Fulbright grant, and currently teaches in Littleton, Colorado.
