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Memoir As Literature and History I AM MALALA: A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR EDUCATORS THEME 1: Memoir as Literature and History For more information or to submit feedback about the resource guide, visit malala.gwu.edu. To expand the reach of Malala’s memoir—I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban—and spread Malala’s message to young people and activists, the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) of the George Washington University (GW), in collaboration with the Malala Fund, developed a resource guide for high school and college students around the world. Building on the content of Malala’s memoir, the resource guide supports global efforts to mobilize women and men to address women’s and girls’ rights to an education. Malala’s memoir opens the door to some of the greatest challenges of our modern world. It is about politics, education, culture, religion and violence against women and girls. It is a moment in the life of a young girl and in the history of a country. To do these broad themes justice, faculty from a wide range of disciplines contributed to the development of the resource guide. The resource guide challenges students to think deeply, share their experiences, and engage with their communities. Each theme is divided into 4 parts: • Part 1 is the narrative with learning objectives to frame the conversation and help plan lessons; • Part 2 lists the resources to help students and teachers deepen their knowledge about the theme; • Part 3 lists individual and group activities, including some to be done outside of class if students are interested; • Part 4 is the high school supplement intended to help high school teachers introduce and discuss some of the concepts and context that appear in the theme narratives. Each part may be printed separately to be used by teachers or students. THE EIGHT THEMES ARE: 1. Memoir as Literature and History 2. Education: A Human Right for Girls 3. Cultural Politics, Gender and History in Malala Yousafzai’s I am Malala 4. Religion and Religious Extremism 5. Malala and Violence against Women and Girls 6. Malala Leadership Essay A Memoir by the Youngest 7. Malala and the Media Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. 8. Global Feminisms: Speaking and To learn how to purchase the Acting about Women and Girls book, visit malala.gwu.edu. MEMOIR AS LITERATURE AND HISTORY BY JULIE DONOVAN PART 1 Narrative In choosing to narrate the brutal attempt on her life, Malala A memoir can excel in evoking immediacy and veracity, Yousafzai selected the literary form known as memoir, a where private feelings mesh with public issues and raw well-established genre used by historical figures and other emotions intertwine with the detachment of rational thoughtful but less recognized men and women to capture argument and the exegesis of an intellectual or political a certain moment in time. This theme will consider the stance. Memoir differs from autobiography in that the particular characteristics of memoir as a literary device and memoir concerns a specific, concentrated period within a its effectiveness in communicating Malala’s story through a life, whereas an autobiography tends to recount the story discussion of the following topics: of a life that is generally more all-embracing, with a greater chronological sweep and more linear structure. There are • The unique attributes of memoir as a literary genre also points of contiguity between the diary and the memoir, • The difference between autobiographies, memoirs, but the temporal immediacy of the diary typically does not and diaries allow the degree of reflection found in the memoir. All three • Memoir as a powerful witness to history forms of relating personal stories are told in the first person, and therefore readers need to be mindful of the process • The relationship between memoir and memory of interpreting a narrator’s point of view. When we read a Malala Yousafzai’s stirring memoir, I Am Malala: The Girl memoir, we may be less conscious of its aesthetic effect than Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, we are when we read a poem or a novel. Yet there is an art combines the personal story of a girl’s life caught in the to the memoir that exercises rhetorical skill just as much as vortex of war and religious extremism. As an increasingly other literary forms in terms of pace, tone, and choices in popular genre of literary nonfiction, Malala’s memoir language. prompts the question: What is it about the memoir that can Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night (1955), and Ishmael make it a more powerful means of expression than other Beah’s account of war in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone: literary forms? In Testament of Youth (1933) Vera Brittain Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) demonstrate how the provides one answer. Grappling with how to depict World memoir stands as a powerful witness to history. Both War I from a young woman’s perspective, Brittain rejected of these works convey the visceral effect of personal the idea of writing a novel, feeling that it would be too far experience that gives history a more human context than a removed from the reality of her experience. Opting to write bald recounting of dates, battles, and other details of more a memoir enabled Brittain to recount her personal story formal or grand historical narratives. They also demonstrate against the backdrop of a harrowing war, within a society the occasionally didactic nature of the memoir, which raises that decried female independence and denied her the right consciousness about society, culture, and government. to vote. Here is how she explained her choice: “In no other Since memory is intrinsic to this genre, we should consider fashion, it seemed, could I carry out my endeavor to put the the complicated relationship between history and memory, life of an ordinary individual into its niche in contemporary and why some events emerge as more notable than others. history, and thus illustrate the influence of world-wide events Indeed, the memoir prompts us to consider how memory and movements upon the personal destinies of men and and history have an unsettled relationship that is open to women.” (12) examination. MEMOIR AS LITERATURE AND HISTORY // 1 While the memoir serves as a testament to injustice, it eye-witness familiar with her surroundings can give: how is also a genre that may indulge the worst excesses of a charismatic Taliban leader sets himself up as a modern- contemporary voyeurism and self-absorption, so it is worth day Robin Hood through his FM radio station, or how considering when memoirs reveal merely narcissism and some people prefer sharia law because it is considered even deceit. Though readers concede the subtleties of more effective than the corrupt legal system in place. framing a story, there remains an expectation that a memoir Piquant details that Malala provides, such as the Pakistani must, at its core, be genuine. When it was discovered establishment’s production of a popular soap opera of that parts of James Frey’s confessional memoir of drug its travails called Beyond the Call of Duty, are described addiction, A Million Little Pieces (2005), were intentionally with the impish humor that shines through Malala’s prose, fabricated, many readers felt betrayed. While fiction has its despite the horrors she experienced. Perhaps it is this share of unreliable first-person narrators, what is demanded capacity to find laughter amid tears that tempers her of the memoir is reliable narration, since the memoir is indictment of inequality and cruelty. inherently linked to a sense of authenticity and good faith. Despite Malala’s courage, maturity, and poise, her WORKS CITED experiences happened when she was a child. Malala’s narrative is typical of the memoir’s ability to give us an Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge, MA: insider’s perspective on events that may seem remote when Harvard University Press, 2013. reported in newscasts and other media. The vividness of Adler, Mortimer. How to Read a Book. New York, NY: Simon and personal experience evokes not only the sense of terror and Schuster, 1972. See Part Three, Chapter 16: “How to Read History,” displacement caused by Taliban control but also the beauty in particular the section entitled “How to Read Biography and of the Swat Valley and the renowned hospitality of the Autobiography.” Pashtun people. It also serves to educate us about an area Barrington, Judith. Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art. Portland, too often conceptualized in the abstract. As Malala explains, OR: Eight Mountain Press, 2002. she thinks of herself as primarily Swati, then Pashtun, and Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. New then Pakistani, demonstrating complicated allegiances in York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. regional and national identity. Malala’s authorial voice is alternately strident and playful, but we may consider the Brittain, Vera. Testament of Youth. London: Penguin, 1994. challenges involved in successfully sustaining that voice. Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank. New York: Bantam, 1993. Malala’s memoir illustrates the power of contrasts— Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: Anchor, 2005. from descriptions of bombardment and her assailant’s Mandela, Nelson. A Long Walk to Freedom. London: Back Bay, 1995. shaking hand as he shoots her at close range—to teenage Nafasi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: preoccupations with Twilight books and arguments with Random House, 2008. Munneba, her loving but possessive best friend. Although she campaigns against the encroaching fundamentalism Said, Edward. Out of Place: A Memoir.
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