An Apology to Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Malala Yousafzai
Bio: This poem was written by Nora Cooper. Check out her other work here.
Dear Malala, if I may call you that,
I don’t really know where to start.
I feel as though “thank you” should be
Thrown in here somewhere
But it doesn’t seem
Big enough
Beginnings are always awkward aren’t they?
Anyway,
this is the beginning of an apology letter
Dear Malala,
If I may call you Malala
I’ve let you down
I think we all have
And I’m sorry
I’m sorry for skipping classes
I’m sorry for packing up before my
professor has finished speaking
I’m sorry for not doing the reading
I’m sorry for only ever meaning to
go to office hours
I’m sorry for being too hungover
to show up for the education
my parents are paying for
I’m sorry, Malala, if I may call you Malala,
for wasting my privilege.
I’m sorry that when I miss school
I get to call it laziness
And that when you miss school
You call it survival
I’m sorry that there are people
Who would rather see your family gathered
at your funeral
than your graduation
I’m sorry that at mine
I all but begged my parents to stop
Taking pictures
Because it wasn’t a big deal
I’m sorry because when I use my textbook
Improperly
It’s as a stool
When you use your textbook improperly
It’s as a shield
I’m sorry there are men with guns
Who would see you dead
Before literate
Dead
Before educated
Dead
Before nobel laureate
I’m sorry Malala because I’m fucking up
I’m sorry too, to Rosalind Franklin who had the
Nobel Prize ripped out from under her
and to Rosalyn Yalow who when getting three A’s and an A minus
in her first ever physics classes her professor commented
how these grades displayed the inferiority of women in the laboratory
And Jane Austen, and Virginia Wolf,
And Charlotte Bronte who gave herself a man’s name
Because they would never read a woman’s writing
And I’m sorry to Marie Curie, Marie du France
Georgia O’Kefe and Frida Kahlo,
To my friend Caroline who told me
That she wanted to change majors from civil engineering
To applied mathematics so she could have time to
Explore other areas of study
But she worried people would comment
“we told you so” “we told you it would be too hard for you”
To my roommate Lindsay
who is one of 15 girls in a lecture of 100 engineering majors
to my sister, studying for the MCAT, worried
she won’t be able to take care of a family
I’m sorry for not starting my essays sooner
When yours would have been called criminal
I’m sorry for letting kids in my science classes tell me that
Girls just don’t have “mathematical minds”
For letting them tell me that my English class
Is a “break” from all the “real” classes I’m taking
I’m sorry Malala, if I may call you Malala
I’m sorry that they tried to kill you for what I sleep through
I’m sorry that they convinced so many young girls
that a bullet fits better than
Knowledge in a woman’s head
I’m sorry they convinced so many young boys
To hand a girl a death threat before a hand off the bus
I’m sorry for all the girls who walk 12 miles to school
Because of how desperately they want to learn
And I won’t even walk 12 minutes
I’m sorry because there are people who would
See me dead rather than at this school
And there are people who would kill me
To take my place
I’m sorry for Seneca falls
And women’s suffrage
I’m sorry for fucking up feminism
I’m sorry for applauding what you stand for
and realizing none of it
I’m sorry for forgetting my place
I’m sorry they only listened to you
When you were so determined to learn
That you refused to die
So you see, Malala, if I may call you that
I’m sorry
I’m going to do better by you
I promise
I’m going to do better
And I’m sorry for everyone I left out of this list
Whose education is a recent luxury
Because let’s face it
It’s a recent luxury for anyone but rich white Christian men to be handed a book
And it’s not their fault either
I’m not mad at you for having privilege
That, you’re right, you didn’t ask for,
None of asked for what we have
But I’m mad at us for wasting our privilege
I will no longer shirk opportunities to speak
Even if my voice shakes
Call me radical
Call me feminazi
Tell me to take a fucking midol
Make jokes from the back of the lecture hall
I will do the readings
I will take the best fucking notes you’ve ever seen
I will walk those 12 minutes to class
I will fuck up sometimes but dammit I will try
I swear I will try
I can’t hear your idiocy
Your bigotry
Over the roar
Of the waves of change
Whose environmental impact I will learn to calculate
And the buzz of my neurons firing
Whose pathways I will not forget
And the shuffling of pages of history textbooks
Whose pages I won’t let you be left out of
Dear Malala, if I may call you that,
I will hear you. I will pick up my books. I will pick up my pencils. I promise
You deserve better
We all do
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