Malala Yousafzai’s 2013 autobiography, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban, focuses on Malala’s defiance against oppression. Malala explains how as a Pakistani girl born in 1997, she watches as the Taliban comes to power where she lives. At fifteen years old, Malala survives a gunshot wound to her head when the Taliban tries to assassinate her. Malala’s story highlights her fight for girls’ rights and education despite the Taliban’s attempts to remove women and girls from public life. However, Malala’s story reveals discrimination of different kinds in her community, outside of the Taliban’s influence. Even before the Taliban, Malala witnesses the same cultural preference for men and boys throughout her childhood as her parents do during their childhoods. Another form of discrimination Malala observes in Pakistan is the abhorrence of certain classes of people. Several minority ethnic groups exist in Pakistan that other Pakistani people treat as undeserving of equal respect. Malala and her parents before her also experience a culture that values light skin over dark skin. Malala and her father become victims of racist beliefs in their community. The discriminatory attitudes are so pervasive, that even Malala internalizes some of the negative thinking. Malala’s story shows how unfair preferences for certain groups, and the disparagement of girls, poor people, and people with dark skin, continues to cause harm.

Gender

Malala focuses most on the disparity between boys and girls in her environment. As children in the 1970s and 1980s, Malala’s parents experience the unequal treatment of boys and girls within their families. Malala’s mother, Toor Pekai, never learns to read or write as a child. Like the other girls in her family, she does not go to school. Malala’s father, Ziauddin, witnesses a similar divide in his family. Malala relates: “As in most families, the girls stayed at home while the boys went to school…School wasn’t the only thing my aunts missed out on. In the morning when my father was given a bowl of cream with his tea, his sisters were given only tea. If there were eggs, they would only be for the boys…” (p. 22). Malala communicates the difference in treatment that her father, Ziauddin, and his sisters receive in their home as children. Malala points out that the different treatment Ziauddin and his sisters experience is not out of the ordinary, as most families behave similarly. Ziauddin, as a boy child, is able to leave the home, and spend time with teachers and other students at school. The girls in Ziauddin’s family must stay at home. The difference is treatment relates not only to education, Malala explains, but to food in the home as well. The caretakers in the family give Ziauddin additional products such as cream and eggs. The bias against girls continues when Malala comes into the world in 1997, a decade before the Taliban terrorizes the Swat Valley. Malala writes about the her family’s reactions to her birth: “My mother was worried about telling [my father] he had a daughter not a son…My parents had not held [a Woma] for me because they could not afford the goat and rice needed to feed the guests, and my grandfather would not help them out because I was not a boy” (p. 44, 47). When Malala is born, Malala’s mother does not want to tell her husband that they have a baby girl. Malala’s mother worries that Malala’s gender is bad news and may cause disappointment. Traditionally, families host a celebration called a Woma, on their new baby’s seventh day of life. However, Malala’s family does not invite people to celebrate. Malala’s grandfather does not want to spend money on a baby girl. Two years later, Malala’s brother, Khushal, is born. Malala knows, “My mother had been waiting for a son and could not hide her joy when he was born…he was the apple of her eye, her niazbeen. It seemed to me that his every wish was her command” (p. 15). Toor Pekai hopes to have a son. Unlike the worry Toor Pekai feels when her daughter is born, she feels happiness when her son is born. As an older sister, Malala sees over the years how her mother feels about her son. Malala believes that as a boy, her younger brother has a certain power over their mother. Toor Pekai’s feelings and behaviors model to her children a preference for boys. Malala shows how over the years the bias against girls and in favor of boys persists, and manifests in various realms, such as education, nutrition, celebrations, and everyday attitudes and behaviors.

Class

Like girls, poor children in Malala’s environment are vulnerable to contempt. Malala explains why some teachers do not want to teach at the mountain village of Sewoor, Pakistan, where her uncle works: “Gujars and Kohistanis are what we call hilly people, peasants who look after buffaloes. Their children are usually dirty and they are looked down upon by Pashtuns, even if they are poor themselves…‘Let them be illiterate.’…All [the teachers] do is to keep the children quiet with a long stick, as they cannot imagine education will be any use to them” (p. 34). People in the small Gujar and Kohistani ethnic groups are victims of scorn due to their traditional livelihoods. Pashtun people and others disdain the Gujar and Kohistani people. Malala claims that people, including teachers, do not care about the education of Gujar and Kohistani children because they believe that an education cannot change the lives of certain people - as if the Gujar and Kohistani people are born with fixed destinies. As a young man, Malala’s father desperately wishes to continue his own education, so he won’t “end up like his brother teaching in a local school” (p. 33). Malala’s father, although he too wants to be an educator, and one day run his own school, wants to avoid the local school. He wants to make conscious choices that can lead him away from the school where his brother works. Ziauddin’s attitude shows how people can dislike entire groups, such as the Gujars and Kohistanis, so much that they don’t even want to be around them. They view proximity to these denigrated groups as failure. When he has children and a school of his own, Ziauddin provides free education for more than 100 children, but not all members of the school parents happily accept poor students at the school. Malala explains: “Some of the richer parents took their children out of the school when they realized they were sharing classrooms with the sons and daughters of people who cleaned their houses or stitched their clothes. They thought it was shameful for their children to mix with those from poor families” (p. 67). Some wealthy families consider the presence of poor people such an indignity, that they insist on educational segregation. They believe that the children of people with certain professions such as cleaners or tailors, are beneath their own children. They want no contact between poor children and their own children. Malala’s story shows how people in her community perpetuate strict social divisions

Skin Color

Colorism harms both Malala and her father before her. Malala describes her father’s experiences as a boy: “…he was insecure about his looks because at school the teachers always favored the handsome boys for their fair skin. His cousins would stop my father on his way home from school and tease him about being short and dark skinned” (p. 28). Ziauddin’s adult educators communicate to Ziauddin as a child that they believe fair skin is beautiful. Further, the adults’ preference for lighter skin affects their behavior, and Ziauddin witnesses the fairer skinned students receive the teachers’ favor. Ziauddin’s own family members exhibit blatant partiality for light skin, and are unkind to Ziauddin because of his dark skin. The attitudes and behaviors within his family and school damage Ziauddin’s confidence. He internalizes the criticisms and comes to dislike his appearance. Malala writes that Ziauddin: “…had been so self-conscious about being dark-skinned that he used to go to the fields to get buffalo milk to spread on his face, thinking it would make him lighter. It was only when he met my mother that he became comfortable in his own skin. Being loved by such a beautiful girl gave him confidence” (p. 15). Ziauddin tries to change the way he looks because of his community’s rejection of his physical appearance. Ziauddin’s hard work and upstanding character are not enough to reassure him of his value. Instead, his self-worth improves because a woman with light skin deems him worthy. As a child, Malala also absorbs her community’s glorification of light skin. She shares, “I wished I had [my mother’s] white-lily skin, fine features and green eyes, but instead had inherited the sallow complexion, wide nose and brown eyes of my father” (p. 15). Malala dreams of more white European features rather than the features she has. She laments that she looks more like her father. As a fifteen-year-old, Malala uses cream to whiten her skin. She recalls an exchange with a friend: “Moniba was looking very beautiful, her skin porcelain-pale. ‘What skin cream are you using?’ I ask her. ‘The same one you’re using,’ she replied. I knew that could not be true. ‘No. Look at my dark skin and look at yours!’ (p. 190). Like her father, Malala disparages her natural skin color, and tries to lighten her complexion. An effort for light skin remains a topic of conversation for Malala and other girls her age, as well as a source of competition. The same narrow definition of beauty that causes Ziauddin to suffer, affects his daughter as well.

I Am Malala portrays long standing inequalities in Pakistan outside of the Taliban’s influence. During her parents’ childhoods and her own, cultural norms dictate that boys are more valuable than girls. As a boy child, Ziauddin receives more education and resources within the home than his sisters. While Malala’s birth does not warrant a celebration within her family, she knows how happy everyone feels for the birth of her younger brother, and feels that her mother caters to his every wish. Malala also brings attention to the marginalization of the poorest people in Pakistan, including various ethnic groups. The general public seems to believe that some groups do not benefit from education. Some parents at Malala’s school do not want their children in the same school as poor children. Finally, Malala shows how across the generations, people around her value fair skin over dark skin. The hierarchy of skin color causes people to give more positive attention to fair skinned people, and negative attention to darker skinned people, which often results in the formation of a damaged self esteem for people with darker skin. Although the title of Malala’s book highlights the injustice of the Taliban, and the struggle of girls, her book reveals widespread discrimination in Pakistan over the years against more than one group of people.


Adam Ellick’s 2009 documentary, “Class Dismissed: Malala’s Story,” contains scenes of graphic violence, and is not suitable for everyone.

References

Yousafzai, M. & Lamb, C. (2013). I am Malala: The girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taliban. Little, Brown and Company.