Student Question
After Malala has had numerous surgeries and has recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital, she and her family stay in Birmingham, England. The family moves first into an apartment and then a rented house with a garden. When Malala starts school in Birmingham, she must get used to differences in curriculum, educational methods, and technology. Because she does not know any of the other girls and misses her friends back home, she is lonely. Her perception is that the other girls see her primarily as a “girls’s rights activist,” which impedes their ability to think of her as a regular person.
It takes time to make good friends like I had at home, and the girls at school here treat me differently. People say, "Oh, that’s Malala" – they see me as "Malala, girls’ rights activist."
She describes some attributes of her ordinary self, “just Malala,” whom her schoolmates back home had always known. These features include being double-joined, having a love of telling jokes and drawing pictures, and having a tendency to quarrel with her brother and her best friend.
Although she knows that the process of making friends is largely a matter of time, she is also aware of the group dynamics that are common to school classes. Part of fitting in will require her to figure out who exemplifies the specific types of girl with which she is familiar. The types she identifies include those who are “well behaved,” “beautiful,” “shy,” or “notorious.”
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.