PULLMAN, Wash. – The Common Reading Program at Washington State University will present the award-winning documentary “He Named Me Malala” at 4:30 p.m. Tues., April 18, in Todd Hall, Room 116. The event is free and open to the public.
The 2015 film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, is an intimate portrait of Malala Yousafzai, author of this year’s WSU common reading book “I Am Malala.”
Yousafzai is the youngest recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for her efforts speaking out for women’s education in her home country of Pakistan. To stop the schoolgirl’s work, she was shot by the Taliban, but survived to carry on with her campaign and her own education.
The film portrays events that are described in the book, her relationship with her father who inspired her passion for education, and her life following the attack as she continued her studies and advocacy in Birmingham, England.
The Common Reading Program began in Pullman in 2007 to help students, their teachers, and the community better engage in academically centered critical thinking, communication, research, and learning around a body of shared information presented in a single, specially selected book. I Am Malala helped students explore a theme of “leadership and social justice.”
Guggenheim also directed the Academy Award-winning 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” about former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s campaign to explain global warming.
The next two-year theme for the program is “frontiers of technology, health, and society.” The 2017-18 Common Reading book, Ready Player One, aligns with this theme and is the first-ever fiction novel selected in program; it will be used by first-year and other students in Pullman, Tri-Cities, Spokane, Everett, and the Global Campus. WSU Vancouver will use the novel Spare Parts for their 2017-18 Common Reading book.
For more information about the Common Reading and upcoming events visit: https://CommonReading.wsu.edu/