This print for Malala Yousafzai (born 12 July 1997) is the third design I’ve made for her. I started the Female Power Project in 2015 with shawl and scarf designs honoring Malala, and they are called “A girl With a Book.” (The blog post I made at this time shows pictures of some of the images I’ve referenced in this post.) This text refers to some of the design elements in the shawls and scarves, not all of which I have used in this print design. But I include reference to them here because I think people might find this design research interesting.

I’ve asked friends and strangers about their female heroes. In fact, now that I am often selling directly at street fairs and similar venues, I see this input from the public who enter my booth as part of the creative process, its performative aspect. The first shawl design I finished, called “A Girl with a Book,” is in honor of Malala Yousafzai, the young woman who campaigned for girls’ education in Pakistan, was shot by a Taliban man, fought hard to survive the shooting, kept working for her cause, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her accomplishments (at 16!), is now a student at Oxford University in the UK, and continues to work for every child’s right to an education. While still a teen, she founded the Malala Fund, an international, non-profit organization that fights for girls’ education. A portion of the proceeds from the Female Power Project goes to the Malala Fund.

To design the shawl I did research on the visual culture of the Swat Valley, the region of Pakistan where Malala was born. I discovered that one of the recurring motifs in the wood carving of the area is based on a woman’s neck ring. The neck ring shape, a nearly-round crescent with outer-facing ends, is pre-islamic, and is thought by anthropologists to be a symbol of female power because of its similarity to the shape of a crescent moon. It persisted even after the coming of Islam because a crescent is Islamic as well. There are several versions, one is a double twist. Although the text I read suggested that the ends look like bird heads, I think they might just as well be serpent heads. The snake is also often a symbol of female power. (The Arts and Crafts of the Swat Valley: Living Traditions in the Hindu Kush, by Johannes Kalter, 1989.)

I built a neck ring shape from various materials because I was interested in experiencing the motif as a physical thing, not just as a drawing. I made a couple versions and they both seem a little magical when I hold them. One version was wrapped and the other was twisted. The twisted version looks much more like two snakes. This is the one I scanned and used in the shawl design.

The shape also made me think of two hands held out, cupped, as if holding water—or holding a book. So I drew a motif of hands in the neck ring shape holding a book. The text on the shawl reads: “Extremists have shown what frightens them most: a girl with a book.” This is a Malala quote used by Amnesty International. I like this sentence because, on the one hand, it is calling the Taliban cowards because they are afraid of a little girl and everyone knows that girls are weak and harmless [sic!]. On the other hand, it suggests that it really is a very powerful thing for a girl to reach into the world and seize knowledge for herself. They should be afraid if their ideology dictates that women should remain ignorant. It is not a secret that the lifting of the status of women lifts up a whole society.

I also read Malala’s memoir, I Am Malala, which I recommend to everyone. She writes lovingly of her homeland. She holds fast to her Muslim faith and describes how the Koran encourages women on their path to knowledge. She tells a compelling story that describes how extremism takes hold of a society. She describes how the Taliban moved into her land and slowly won over people through rhetoric and intimidation. Then they started destroying schools and assassinating people. Their tactics were designed to breed fear and conformity. She held to her conviction that it is not a crime to seek an education. In this she was supported by her educator/activist father and her illiterate mother. Again and again we see the importance of committed fathers in the nurturing of strong women.  The day that Malala was shot, in a school bus delivering her home from school, her mother was attending her own first reading lesson.