Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Writer

1977-09-15

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer of novels, short fiction, and nonfiction. Her work explores identity, gender, migration, and postcolonial experience.

Books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah
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Purple Hibiscus
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Half of a Yellow Sun
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Quotes by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, just as worthy of acknowledgement. These are the little things, but sometimes it is the little things that sting the most.
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Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes - that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not.
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A man is likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative and creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
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I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands.So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist.
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When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult to join? If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as different from the majority of your race? If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you? If you take a job with an affirmative action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think that you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race? Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race?
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Gender matters everywhere in the world. And I would like today to ask what we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
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We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about their girlfriends. But our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. (But we of course expect them to bring home the perfect man for marriage when the time is right.)
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If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over it becomes normal.
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We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about their girlfriends. But our daughters' boyfriends? God forbif. (But we of course expect them to bring home the perfect man for marriage when the time is right.)
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We're all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.
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Now imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.
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I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. But I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better.We say to girls 'You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.' Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life's choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, yet we don't teach boys to do the same?We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.
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But by far the worst thing we do to males — by making them feel they have to be hard — is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.
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We define masculinity in very narrow way. Masculinity is hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak-- a hard man.
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But by far the worst thing we do to males--by making them feel they have to be hard--is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.
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Ifemelu thought about the expression sweet girl. Sweet girl meant that, for a long time, Don had molded Ranyinudo into a malleable shape, or that she had allowed him to think he had.
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Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.
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All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please these men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.
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And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males.
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Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
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