We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World

by Malala Yousafzai

Overview

With her powerful new book, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai will start with her own story of displacement as an Internally Displaced Person to show what it means to lose your home, your community, and the only world you've ever known. She will also share the personal stories of some of the incredible girls she has met on her various journeys to refugee camps and the cities where refugee girls and their families have settled.

In a time of immigration crises, war, and border conflicts, We Are Displaced is an important reminder from one of the world's most famous persons who experienced displacement that everyone deserves universal human rights and a home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316523646
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	11,632
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Malala Yousafzai, the educational campaigner from Swat Valley, Pakistan, came to public attention by writing for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban. Using the pen name Gul Makai, she often spoke about her family's fight for girls' education in her community. In October 2012, Malala was targeted by the Taliban and shot in the head as she was returning from school on a bus. She miraculously survived and has continued her campaign for education. In recognition of her courage and advocacy, Malala was honored with the National Youth Peace Prize in Pakistan in 2011 and won both the International Children's Peace Prize and the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award in 2013. She is the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and was named one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Malala continues to champion universal access to education through Malala Fund.

Editorial Reviews

…a stirring and timely book that strips the political baggage from the words "migrant" and "refugee," telling the deeply personal stories of displacement and disruption that were lived by Yousafzai and nine other girls…In the girls' own words, we hear about escape, resettlement and the conflicting emotions that come with fitting into a new place when so much is defined by where they came from. The accounts are intimate, and strike me as honest. At times, it felt as if the narrator were sharing her story with a trusted new friend…Racism and discrimination are painful elements in the daily lives of minorities in countries torn apart by war and civil unrest, but also right here in the United States. This helps make We Are Displaced relatable and relevant to a wide range of readers. What makes it memorable, though, is that in all these accounts, hope emerges as a kind of belligerent reaction to pain and loss.

The New York Times Book Review - Fernanda Santos

12/24/2018

Nobel Peace Prize winner Yousafzai (I Am Malala), who famously survived being shot by Taliban soldiers as a teen in 2012, is a passionate activist for girls’ right to education. Yet, in this profound volume, she sidesteps those aspects of her life to illuminate another experience: displacement—beginning with her family’s forced 2009 evacuation of their Pakistani hometown in response to escalating Taliban violence. Comprising the bulk of the book are urgent, articulate first-person stories from displaced or refugee young women whom Yousafzai has encountered in her travels, whose birthplaces include Colombia, Guatemala, Syria, and Yemen. Their often raw testaments encompass witnessing atrocities (a Congolese native whose family fled to Zambia watched a vigilante mob attack her mother) and harrowing escapes (as the military burns their Myanmar village, a Rohingya Muslim family flees by foot to begin an arduous journey to Bangladesh). The contributors’ strength, resilience, and hope in the face of trauma is astounding, and their stories’ underlying message about the heartbreaking loss of their former lives and homelands (and the resulting “tangle of emotions that comes with leaving behind everything you know”) is profoundly moving. Ages 14–up. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 04/01/2019

Gr 7 Up—While Yousafzai's autobiography, I Am Malala, describes her life in Pakistan culminating in her dramatic altercation with the Taliban, this book highlights some of the work Yousafzai has done since she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first part provides additional information on Yousafzai's life in Pakistan with an emphasis on her experience as an internally displaced person and the later challenges of acclimating to life as a refugee in Great Britain. In the second part of the book, readers are provided with narratives from other refugee girls who met with Yousafzai in different stages of her work. These stories depict the lives of girls from all over the world, pushed from their homes for different reasons and yet, Yousafzai highlights consistent themes found in each one. From the Middle East to South America, Africa to Asia, these girls and their families faced the same challenge: leaving their homes and the communities they love. Yousafzai writes with gut-wrenching detail, showing readers the many complex layers of life as a refugee including the struggle of escape, the frustrations of bureaucracy in the face of mortal danger, and the painful goodbyes along the way. She shines a light on the personal side of this international crisis and pushes every individual to find a way to contribute to the solution. VERDICT Everyone should read this book.–Paige Rowse, Needham High School, MA

School Library Journal

★ 2018-11-12

In this uplifting work Yousafzai shares the survival stories of female refugees from around the world.

Before she was a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Yousafzai was displaced. When she was just 11-years-old, the Taliban forced Yousafzai and her family to leave their idyllic home in the Swat Valley and join the ranks of Pakistan's Internally Displaced Persons. Yousafzai recounts the agony of leaving behind her books, friends, and pet chickens and the disappointment of interrupted schooling. She also vividly describes the horror of seeing schools reduced to rubble as a result of bombings, an experience that both politicized her and forced her family into exile in England. The author devotes only about a quarter of the book to her own story, the remainder is a collection of oral histories from displaced women and girls from countries ranging from Yemen to Colombia to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each refugee's tale of survival is equal parts devastating and inspiring, and the narrators do not shy away from the complex, contradictory experiences of fleeing a homeland. The narratives are filled with emotionally specific descriptive details that render each voice powerful and unique. In the prologue, Yousafzai specifically states that her purpose is to transform refugees from nameless, faceless statistics into who they really are: humans whose identities are more than just their displaced status.

A poignant, fascinating, and relevant read. (author's note, background information, biographies) (Nonfiction. 13-adult)

Kirkus Reviews

Nobel Peace Prize winner Yousafzai, who famously survived being shot by Taliban soldiers as a teen in 2012, is a passionate activist for girls' right to education. Yet, in this profound volume, she sidesteps those aspects of her life to illuminate another experience: displacement - beginning with her family's forced 2009 evacuation of their Pakistani hometown in response to escalating Taliban violence. Comprising the bulk of the book are urgent, articulate first-person stories from displaced or refugee young women whom Yousafzai has encountered in her travels, whose birthplaces include Colombia, Guatemala, Syria and Yemen. ... The contributors' strength, resilience, and hope in the face of trauma is astounding, and their stories' underlying message about the heartbreaking loss of their former lives and homelands (and the resulting "tangle of emotions that comes with leaving behind everything you know") is profoundly moving.—Publishers Weekly

"A stirring and timely book that strips the political baggage from the words 'migrant' and 'refugee,' telling the deeply personal stories of displacement and disruption that were lived by Yousafzai and nine other girls. ... [In] all these accounts, hope emerges as a kind of belligerent reaction to pain and loss."—The New York Times Book Review

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