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The Excerpt

At 28, Malala Yousafzai is finally finding her way

The Excerpt

USA TODAY

News, Daily News

4.11.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

At 28, Malala Yousafzai’s life so far has been anything but ordinary. When she was just 15, she was shot by the Taliban on her way to school, targeted for advocating for girls’ rights to education. At 17, she became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, opening schools and speaking around the world with the Malala Fund. Now Malala is sharing a different side of herself in a new memoir, “Finding My Way.” USA TODAY Books Editor Clare Mulroy sat down with Malala to talk about her new memoir and how she feels about embracing her more ordinary self.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

At 28, Malala Yusuf's life has been anything but ordinary.

0:08.0

When she was just 15, she was shot by the Taliban on her way to school, targeted for advocating

0:13.0

for girls' rights to education. At 17, she became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize,

0:19.0

opening schools and speaking around the world with the Malala Fund.

0:22.6

Now Malala is sharing a different side of herself in her new memoir, Finding My Way.

0:27.5

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm USA Today Books reporter Claire Mulroy.

0:33.2

In Finding My Way, Malala chronicles her college years at Oxford, where she found her identity

0:38.4

as a young adult and a global activist.

0:41.0

She writes about dating and partying and playing the game among us during COVID, but she also

0:45.4

writes about her hesitation to get married and processing the attack that changed her life

0:50.1

over a decade ago.

0:51.8

Finding My Way is on bookshelves now.

0:53.6

Thank you for joining us,

0:54.6

Malala. Thank you. I wanted to start by asking, you know, at the beginning of this book,

0:59.0

you write that your whole life people have been telling you who you are. You're taking

1:03.7

this chance now to correct that record, reintroduce yourself. I mean, can you tell us

1:08.6

like what parts, what parts of you have been missing

1:11.4

that you're excited to share with the world now? It has been an extraordinary journey for me

1:16.6

to be a normal person. And I got that exposure by going to college. This was the first time that I was

1:23.8

on my own, managing my own schedule myself. I was away from my parents and my work.

1:29.3

And I allowed myself to try new things, make friends,

1:34.3

and I wanted this because I was a very lonely student

...

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