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bdde0f9
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She liked that he wore their relationship so boldly, like a brightly colored shirt. Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. She would sink into moodiness, and snap at Obinze, or be distant. And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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57ef69a
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Military men would always overthrow one another, because they could, because they were all power drunk.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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fddd25c
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Is Obama Anything but Black? So lots of folk--mostly non-black--say Obama's not black, he's biracial, multiracial, black-and-white, anything but just black. Because his mother was white. 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 ..
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black
mixed-race
multiracial
obama
race
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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af05817
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I learned a lot about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, "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. Of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happen to me in the world because I am a woman. This same man, by..
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experiences
woman
human-being
world
blind
silencing
talking
gender
question
systems
oppression
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d930ec9
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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. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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4a4c5cd
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But here is a sad truth: Our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women. We have been so conditioned to think of power as male that a powerful woman is an aberration. And so she is policed. We ask of powerful women: Is she humble? Does she smile? Is she grateful enough? Does she have a domestic side? Questions we do not ask of powerful men, which shows that our discomfort is not with power itself, but with women. We judge..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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4df50e8
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We use the word "respect" to mean something a women shows a man, but not often something a man shows a woman."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ef1681a
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If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporations, it starts to seem "natural" that only men should be heads of corporations."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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faf4797
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Philip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theresa, to shine." Allowed. Now let us reverse it. Theresa May has allowed her husband to shine. Does it make sense? If Philip May were prime minister, perhaps we might hear that his wife had "supported" him from the background, or that she was "behind" him, or that she'd "stood by his side," but we would never hear that she had "allowed" him to shin..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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4ff8b4e
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Eugene has to stop doing God's job. God is big enough to do his own job. If God will judge our father for choosing to follow the way of our ancestors, then let God do the judging, not Eugene.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5b99a36
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How can a person claim to love you and yet want you to do things that suit only them? Udenna was like that.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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48bc4d0
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He turned to her and said, "About time," when the train finally creaked in, with the familiarity strangers adopt with each other after sharing in the disappointment of a public service."
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strangers
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2a5df0f
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She had come to understand that American parenting was a juggling of anxieties, and that it came with having too much food: a sated belly gave Americans time to worry that their child might have a rare disease that they had just read about, made them think that they had the right to protect their child from disappointment and want and failure. A sated belly gave Americans the luxury of praising themselves for being good parents, as if carin..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e9e3a31
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The white missionaries brought us their god," Amaka was saying. "Which was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn't we at least repackage it?"
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e5b16cc
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The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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64220a8
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We are very ideological about fiction in this country. If a character is not familiar, then that character becomes unbelievable.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5188a69
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Never, ever link Chizalum's appearance with morality. Never tell her that a short skirt is "immoral." Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality. If you clash over what she wants to wear, never say things like "You look like a prostitute," as I know your mother once told you. Instead, say, "That dress doesn't flatter you like this other one." Or doesn't fit as well. Or doesn't look as attractive. ..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5ba4762
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Understanding America for the Non-American Black: American Tribalism In America, tribalism is alive and well. There are four kinds--class, ideology, region, and race. First, class. Pretty easy. Rich folk and poor folk. Second, ideology. Liberals and conservatives. They don't merely disagree on political issues, each side believes the other is evil. Intermarriage is discouraged and on the rare occasion that it happens, is considered remarkab..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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acf3ce1
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As we drove back to Enugu, I laughed loudly,above Fela's stringent singing. I laughed because Nsukka's untarred roads coat cars with dust in the harmattan and with sticky mud in the rainy season. Because the tarred roads spring potholes like surprise presents and the air smells of hills and history and the sunlight scatters the sand and turns it into gold dust. Because Nsukka could free something deep inside your belly that would rise up to..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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75141c3
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Just give her one, Ifemelu thought. To overwhelm a child of four with choices, to lay on her the burden of making a decision, was to deprive her of the bliss of childhood. Adulthood, after all, already loomed, where she would have to make grimmer and grimmer decisions.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2df3c1b
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The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence. They had not read her blog but they had heard that she was a "leading blogger" about race."
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reassurance
workshops
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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35de974
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You know it was love at first sight for both of us," he said. "For both of us? Is it by force? Why are you speaking for me?" "I'm just stating a fact. Stop struggling." ... "Yes, it's a fact," she said. "What?" "I love you."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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28f2921
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We did not scale the rod because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified that we couldn't.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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cfe1de7
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Tell Chizalum that women actually don't need to be championed and revered; they just need to be treated as equal human beings.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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19058bd
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Everybody will have an opinion about what you should do, but what matters is what you want for yourself, and not what others want you to want.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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3db6278
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She liked that he wore their relationship so boldly, like a brightly colored shirt.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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f16197f
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She imagines the cocoa brown of Nnedi's eyes lighting up, her lips moving quickly, explaining that riots do not happen in a vacuum, that religion and ethnicity are often politicized because the ruler is safe if the hungry ruled are killing one another.
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politics
the-thing-around-your-neck
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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cca5332
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Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they seem them as relational rather than as individual equal humans. Men who, when discussing rape, will always say something like 'if it were my daughter or wife or sister.' Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy.
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equality
feminism
humanity
rape-culture
sexism
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d9b0d3d
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I often wondered why Sister Veronica needed to understand it, when it was simply the way things were done.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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b7bb0de
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We teach girls shame. Close your legs. Cover yourself. We make them feel as though by being born female, they are already guilty of something. And so girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. Who silence themselves. Who cannot say what they truly think. Who have turned pretence into an art form.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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19e6d82
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Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women. For X please insert words like "anger," "ambition," "loudness," "stubbornness," "coldness," "ruthlessness."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a5c21a9
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Don't see it as forgiving him. See it as allowing yourself to be happy. What will you do with the misery you have chosen? Will you eat misery?
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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18a1c16
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Sometimes life begins when the marriage ends
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marriage
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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f30c59f
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Why should a woman's success be a threat to a man?
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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8911545
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Americans will smile at you and be extremely friendly but if your name is not Cory or Chad, they make no effort at saying it properly. The Brits will be surly and will be suspicious if you're too friendly but they will treat foreign names as though they are actually valid names." "That's interesting,"
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c4f34fe
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It's strange how I have felt, with every major event that has occurred in my life, that you were the only person who would understand.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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3f930c5
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Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall Apart? Ifemulu asked, wishing she had not told Ranyinudo about Dike. She was angrier with Ranyinudo than she had ever been, yet she knew that Ranyinudo meant well, and had said what many other Nigerians would say, which was why she had not told anyone else about Dike's suicide attempt since she came back.
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immigration
culture
home
perception
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d6eda4c
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One day I said to them, Where is the God you worship? They said he was like Chukwu, that he was in the sky. I asked then, Who is the person that was killed, the person that hangs on the wood outside the mission? They said he was the son, but that the son and the father are equal. It was then that I knew that the white man was mad. The father and son are equal? Tufia! Do you not see?
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paganism
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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8138ba7
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You looked like the kind of person who will do something because you want to, and not because everyone else is doing it.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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dcb28c3
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Later, she said, "I have to take my braids out for my interviews and relax my hair. Kemi told me that I shouldn't wear braids to the interview. If you have braids, they will think you are unprofessional." "So there are no doctors with braided hair in America?" Ifemelu asked. "I have told you what they told me. You are in a country that is not your own. You do what you have to do if you want to succeed."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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8b18db0
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It was black-black, so thick it drank two containers of relaxer at the salon, so full it took hours under the hooded dryer, and, when finally released from pink plastic rollers, sprang free and full, flowing down her back like a celebration. Her father called it a crown of glory.
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afro-hair
black-hair
hair
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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bc80d9d
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Lots of liberal white folks are looking for black friends.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ba41cca
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Tell her that kindness matters. Praise her when she is kind to other people. But teach her that kindness must never be taken for granted. Tell her that she, too, deserves the kindness of others. Teach her to stand up for what is hers. If another child takes her toy without her permission, ask her to take it back, because her consent is important. Tell er that if anything ever makes her uncomfortable, to speak up, to say it, to shout.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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8085ca4
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We raise girls to see each other as competitors--not for jobs or accomplishments, which in my opinion can be a good thing--but for the attention of men. 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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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |