Malala

Today’s block is traditionally called Prairie Queen or True Blue, but Quilt’s Etc. has renamed it in honor of a courageous young woman. Malala Yousafzai’s parents run a chain of schools in northwest Pakistan. In 2009, when she was eleven, Malala published a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu about her life under Taliban rule. In October 2012 a gunman boarded her school bus and asked for Malala by name. He pointed a gun at her head and fired three times. One shot went through the side of her face and her shoulder. Malala survived and was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England to recover. In trying to silence her, the Taliban unwittingly made Malala the world’s most famous teenager. In October 2014 Malala became the world’s youngest recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize.