What is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind about?
This The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind summary follows the 2009 memoir by William Kamkwamba, written with journalist Bryan Mealer and published by William Morrow. It became a New York Times bestseller and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and the publisher cites more than a million copies sold across nearly twenty languages. Chiwetel Ejiofor adapted it into a 2019 Netflix film, his feature directorial debut, shot on location in Malawi and starring Maxwell Simba as William.
What genre is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind?
It is a memoir and coming-of-age story about self-taught invention against enormous odds. Readers who want another true story of education pursued against a family's resistance and poverty should read Tara Westover's Educated next, for a very different but equally hard-won relationship to learning.
How did William Kamkwamba build his windmill?
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind summary
This The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind summary follows William Kamkwamba's childhood in Wimbe, Malawi, through the devastating famine that forced him out of school at around age fourteen. Determined to keep learning, he taught himself basic electricity and mechanics from library books, and neighbors, classmates, and even his own mother mocked him as "misala" — crazy — while he scavenged parts to build his windmill.
In 2006, inspectors from a teacher-training program spotted the finished windmill and told their supervisor, Dr. Hartford Mchazime, who arranged local press coverage and helped get Kamkwamba's school fees covered. That coverage reached a Malawian software engineer, whose American colleague Mike McKay wrote about it on his blog — which reached TEDGlobal's conference director, Emeka Okafor, who tracked Kamkwamba down and invited him to speak.
How does The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind end?
Who are the key people in The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind?
William Kamkwamba: The author and protagonist, who built a windmill from scrap as a teenager.
Trywell and Agnes Kamkwamba: William's parents, farmers initially skeptical of the project.
Dr. Hartford Mchazime: The education official who discovered the windmill and helped arrange press coverage and school sponsorship.
Mike McKay: The American blogger whose post about Kamkwamba reached TED's organizers.
Emeka Okafor: TEDGlobal's conference director, who tracked Kamkwamba down and invited him to speak in 2007.
Bryan Mealer: The journalist and co-author who spent months in Kamkwamba's village helping write the memoir.
Best quotes from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
The most quoted lines from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, checked against the Goodreads work-quotes page for this title:
"I try, and I made it!"
"If you want to make it, all you have to do is try."
"Whatever you want to do, if you do it with all your heart, it will happen."
"I went to sleep dreaming of Malawi, and all the things made possible when your dreams are powered by your heart."
"Few people realize this, but cutting down the trees is one of the things that keeps us Malawians poor."
Frequently asked questions
Is The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind a true story?
Yes. It's a memoir co-written by William Kamkwamba, the real person the book is about, and journalist Bryan Mealer, who spent months interviewing Kamkwamba and his community in Malawi. Press coverage of Kamkwamba's windmill predates the book itself, independently confirming the core events.
What happened to William Kamkwamba after the book?
He attended the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg on scholarship, then graduated from Dartmouth College in 2014 with a degree in Environmental Studies. He has since worked as a TED Fellow and an IDEO.org Global Fellow, and continues clean-energy work in Malawi through the Moving Windmills Project.
How does the book differ from the Young Readers Edition?
The 2015 Young Readers Edition, published by Dial Books, is shorter and uses simpler language, omits some of the original's more adult content, and adds an updated epilogue covering Kamkwamba's Dartmouth graduation, which happened after the original 2009 edition was published.
How does the book differ from the 2019 Netflix film?
The film, directed by and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, compresses the timeline and centers the conflict mainly on William and his father, while the book gives more weight to community-wide skepticism, including from his own mother, and covers more of Malawi's political and historical context around the famine.
Is the original windmill still standing?
According to the 2019 film's production designer, parts of the original windmill were reportedly still standing in Wimbe village when the crew scouted the location, though the filmmakers built a replica for filming rather than using the original.
What textbook inspired Kamkwamba's windmill?
An eighth-grade American science textbook called Using Energy, by Mary M. Atwater, found in his old school's library. Its cover photo of windmills and its diagrams — which he relied on heavily given his limited English — set him on the path to building his own.
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