Bingo Board Review: I am Malala. The girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taleban by Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb

I have been meaning to get my hands on this book for a while, and having set myself a goal of reading 12 non-fiction books this year AND placing this specific book on my 2017 Bingo Board I figured it was time to buckle down and do it!


I think we all know who Malala is. As the title says she was the girl who stood up for education and was shot by the Taleban. I had never heard of her before she was shot and it was all over the news. I thought she was more or less randomly targeted by the Taleban and only took up her fight for education for girls after the fact. But it turns out that she did a great deal of campaigning and activism before she was shot, and this was the reason she was targeted. 

In this book we learn about her life mostly before the shots and we see how her home in Pakistan slowly but securely came under the thumb of the Taleban. Meanwhile Malala and her father, himself an avid activist for education, fight to keep Pakistan from turning into the Taleban controlled Afghanistan with all the many restrictions placed on the people there. We follow Malala’s life in great detail up until she is shot. The last few chapters detail her recovery and her continued work for girls’ rights to education. But the main part of the book is about her life before the shooting. 

As I mentioned above I thought Malala was targeted simply because she went to school, so I figured this book would be about the time after she was shot and how she turned that into a platform for activism. At first I was perhaps a little disappointed, but I quickly saw that I had it wrong and I enjoyed learning about her life before, and the way she and her father built their platform. I would have liked to learn a bit more about her work and life after the attack, but there is still a lot to do on that front so I guess there is hope for another book in the future. 

I enjoyed Malala’ voice and thought she captured her society very well. I also enjoyed how she didn’t hesitate to call out the bad things in her society, and how she took action to try and change what she didn’t like. I think most people could learn a lot from Malala. 


I gave this book 3,5 stars on Goodreads because while I did enjoy it, I did find it a bit unstructured some times, and as I said I would have liked to see a little more of her work after the attack. 

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