San Jose crowd cheers youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner
Malala Yousafzai, the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told hundreds of people in San Jose on Friday that “education is every child’s right” and urged support for widespread efforts to guarantee secondary schooling for children around the world.
Malala, the 17-year-old Pakistani human rights activist, issued the call during comments at San Jose State University, where she was greeted with cheers and a standing ovation by an enthralled audience packed with girls and women, many clutching her best-selling memoir, “I Am Malala.”
People are standing with me ... and now I’m speaking up for every girl around the world,” she said during an hourlong conversation with Khaled Hosseini of San Jose, the author of the popular novel “The Kite Runner.
Banned by the Taliban from going to school as a fourth-grader, Malala told the dramatic details of growing up in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where women and girls suffered “terrifying” repression to survive simply to get basic schooling.
Malala’s autobiography details how as a 15-year-old schoolgirl in rural Pakistan, she was shot in the face by Taliban fighters intent on stopping her efforts to get an education.