Raise your hand if you have been called a feminist as a derisive term.
Raise your hand if you have ever had to explain to someone that feminism is, in fact, not the hatred of men or the wishing to take something away from them but rather believing in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
Raise both your hands if you’ve experienced that from someone younger than you.
I am, on the best of days, probably a lazy feminist. It has taken me a long time to reckon with the idea that the concept of equality, and not pressuring any gender into socialized expectations, is apparently radical. I just didn’t fully understand that I had to be out proselytizing the good word about feminism. That’s where my privilege shows.
Ms. Adichie, in her 50 page book-let, lays out for her audience (and it is a rather specific one, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t extrapolate out to a larger one) what this crazy feminism thing is, and how it’s for everyone. It’s both as simple and as beautiful as that. The patriarchy harms everyone, and feminism aims to heal through equality of options and choice.
Following the election results here in the United States I have realized that I need to be better educated about the causes I believe in, and willing to put some skin into the game. In that goal, there will be a lot more books in my CBR9 reviews about issues of social justice and feminism. Ms. Adichie’s book is a great place to start in order to give your brain some food. The Read Harder Challenge task I used this book to complete is “read a book aloud to someone” so I now have a recording of it in my own voice, to go along with her TEDxEuston talk.
I read Americanah earlier this year and was stunned by how clear-sighted her fiction goals were. I’ll have to check this one out. I have long considered myself a feminist, and I am always astounded when people interpret that word as a derogatory term. I feel like it has happened more in the last decade than when I was a teenager… but perhaps it’s because I haven’t really been having the conversations.
I think I’ll be adding more nonfiction to my reading pile as well! I’d love to read Ms. Adichie’s work. I’m just going to hide in my 800-page dystopian for a bit longer…I’m not ready for the world to be real yet :)
Oh I completely understand. I read two romance novels simultaneously upon finishing this book and All the Single Ladies, which I had actually started before the election. I needed a break, and I’ll be diving back in come January.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is THE BEST. Like, full-on mic-drop, Beyonce in “Sorry” THE BEST. Have you seen this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eloHoAvArCo . She totally cuts through racist mansplaining bullshit without breaking a sweat. It’s awe-inspiring. And her eye-roll game is ON FIRE.
I don’t think I’ve read this book-let, but I *think* I’ve seen the TED Talk. I know I’ve seen the “Danger of a Single Story” TED Talk, which I share with every single one of my composition classes every semester.
I had heard about it, but not yet seen it, thank you!
(His attempts at gaslighting and her refusal to comply with his narrative, a thing of beauty.)
LOVE HER.