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26b3d89
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We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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4b1c182
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Today, women in general are more likely to do housework than men--cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a cooking gene or because over years they have been socialized to see cooking as their role? I was going to say that perhaps women are born with a cooking gene until I remembered that the majority of famous cooks in the world--who are given the fancy title of "chef"--are men."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5a0e9ca
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Don't think that raising her feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not exclusive.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a762a0e
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If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach their full potential.
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feminism
gender-roles
gender-stereotypes
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a10daab
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She recognized in Kelsey the nationalism of liberal Americans who copiously criticized America but did not like you to do so; they expected you to be silent and grateful, and always reminded you of how much better than wherever you had come from America was.
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criticism
immigrants
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ac08cf5
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In the recent US elections, we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond that nicely alliterative name, it was really about this: in the US, a man and a woman are doing the same job, with the same qualifications, and the man is paid more because he is a man. So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense--a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most imp..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a00ca43
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I don't want to be a sweetheart. I want to be the fucking love of your life," Curt said with a force that startled her."
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love
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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fd552f3
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I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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6ff38e9
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I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d992eb2
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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 fragile egos. The a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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1297786
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He had first been excited by Facebook, ghosts of old friends suddenly morphing to life with wives and husbands and children, and photos trailed by comments. But he began to be appalled by the air of unreality, the careful manipulation of images to create a parallel life, pictures that people had taken with Facebook in mind, placing in the background the things of which they were proud.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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7986d5d
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I think love is the most important thing in life. Whatever kind, however you define it, but I think of it generally as being greatly valued by another human being and greatly valuing another human being.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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40d9a0c
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But race is not biology; race is sociology. Race is not genotype; race is phenotype. Race matters because of racism. And racism is absurd because it's about how you look. Not about the blood you have. It's about the shade of your skin and the shape of your nose and the kink of your hair.
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racism
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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29db1de
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There are slightly more women than men in the world--52 percent of the world's population is female--but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a8d0137
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To call him humble was to make rudeness normal. Besides, humility had always seemed to him a specious thing, invented for the comfort of others; you were praised for humility by people because you did not make them feel any more lacking than they already did. It was honesty that he valued; he had always wished himself to be truly honest, and always feared that he was not
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rudeness
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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51010b1
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Is it a good life, Daddy?" Nkiru has taken to asking lately on the phone, with that faint, vaguely troubling American accent. It is not good or bad, I tell her, it is simply mine. And that is what matters."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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7dd35aa
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You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same--condescending.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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579fb99
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There was a feeling I wanted to feel that I did not feel.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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180bc8a
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Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you love.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5308634
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Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?" This type of question is a way of silencing a person's specific experiences."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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097a84f
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Teach her that to love is not only to give but also to take. This is important because we give girls subtle cues about their lives--we teach girls that a large component of their ability to love is their ability to sacrifice their selves.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ee8617a
|
Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love, and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, but we don't teach boys to do the same?
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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934c0c6
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Beware the danger of what I call Feminism Lite. It is the idea of conditional female equality. Please reject this entirely. It is a hollow, appeasing, and bankrupt idea. Being a feminist is like being pregnant. You either are or you are not. You either believe in the full equality of men and women or you do not. Feminism
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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7bd4478
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It doesn't have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There's a lot you can do with natural hair
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women
black
hair
race
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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6fd91cc
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The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it's a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black and fall in love with a white person, race doesn't matter when you're alone together because it's just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters...
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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4a5e901
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Gender and class are different. Poor men still have the privileges of being men, even if they do not have the privileges of being wealthy.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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729bb69
|
It is one of the things she has come to love about America, the abundance of unreasonable hope.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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da57528
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Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a75bbbc
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Are you kidding me?' Shan asked, slightly drunk, slightly dramatic, and now sitting yoga style on the floor. 'You can't write an honest novel about race in this country. If you write about how people are really affected by race, it'll be too obvious. Black writers who do literary fiction in this country, all three of them, not the ten thousand who write those bullshit ghetto books with the bright covers, have two choices: they can do precio..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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968104c
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Other men might respond by saying: Okay, this is interesting, but I don't think like that. I don't even think about gender. Maybe not. And that is part of the problem. That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender. That many men say, like my friend Louis did, that things might have been bad in the past but everything is fine now. And that many men do nothing to change it. If you are a man and you walk into a restaurant a..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2725e54
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Culture does not make people. People make culture.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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df7e5d8
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Try more strategy and less force. Passion never wins any game, never mind what they say." He said something similar now: "Excuses don't win a game. You should try strategy."
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win
strategy
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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0a89885
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she always chose peace over truth,
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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b8c0bf8
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She was after all the kind of woman who would make a man easily uproot his life, the kind who, because she did not expect or ask for certainty, made a certain kind of sureness become possible.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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dc6b89c
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It was the exaggerated gratitude that came with immigrant insecurity.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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f4d0d0f
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I cannot control even the dreams that I have made.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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0339d96
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Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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51daf75
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Periods are normal and natural, and the human species would not be here if periods did not exist.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2b42c0e
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The biggest problem in this country is not corruption. The problem is that there are many qualified people who are not where they are supposed to be because they won't lick anybody's ass, or they don't know which ass to lick or they don't even know how to lick an ass. I'm lucky to be licking the right ass." She smiled."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d3307f2
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Because this is America. You're supposed to pretend that you don't notice certain things.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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417902c
|
Not long ago, I wrote an article about being young and female in Lagos. And an acquaintance told me that it was an angry article, and I should not have made it so angry. But I was unapologetic. Of course it was angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. In addition to anger, I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the abilit..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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1dc15ea
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The wind blowing across the British Isles was odorous with fear of asylum seekers, infecting everybody with the panic of impending doom, and so articles were written and read, simply and stridently, as though the writers lived in a world in which the present was unconnected to the past, and they had never considered this to be the normal course of history: the influx into Britain of black and brown people from countries created by Britain. ..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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086f6e7
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She seemed so happy, so at peace, and I wondered how anybody around me could feel that way when liquid fire was raging inside me, when fear was mingling with hope and clutching itself around my ankles.
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feelings
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ab65ab1
|
There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman's despair.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |