|
100db5d
|
Each memory stunned her with its blinding luminosity. Each brought with it a sense of unassailable loss, a great burden hurtling towards her, and she wished she could duck, lower herself so that it would bypass her, so that she would save herself. Love was a kind of grief. This was what the novelists meant by suffering. She had often thought it a little silly, the idea of suffering for love, but now she understood.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
7622ee0
|
There was something in him, lighter than ego but darker than insecurity, that needed constant buffing, polishing, waxing.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
d4ad4a0
|
What is the point of culture? Culture functions ultimately to ensure the preservation and continuity of a people.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
1619f39
|
There is so much that is still silent between Jaja and me. Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked.
|
|
siblings
speech
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
f1ce4ce
|
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. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
cde2b5e
|
above all, let your focus be on remaining a full person. Take time for yourself. Nurture your own needs. Please do not think of it as 'doing it all'. Our culture celebrates the idea of women who are able to 'do it all' but does not question the premise of that praise. I have no interest in the debate about women doing it all because it is a debate that assumes that caregiving and domestic work are singularly female domains, and idea that ..
|
|
motherhood
feminism
gender-stereotypes
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
2be20d6
|
What struck me - with her and with many other female American friends I have - is how invested they are in being 'liked'. How they have been raised to believe that their being likeable is very important and that this 'likeable' trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
716df91
|
A man who would be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in.
|
|
feminist
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
4e04fa7
|
Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
62791e0
|
Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general--but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded."
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
a5ca0ab
|
Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
51be920
|
Oh, my God,' she said, between sobs. 'Oh, my God.' Olanna reached out often to squeeze her arm. The rawness of Edna's grief made her helpless, brought the urge to stretch her hand into the past and reverse history. Finally, Edna fell asleep. Olanna gently placed a pillow beneath her head and sat thinking about how a single act could reverberate over time and space and leave stains that could never be washed off. She thought about how epheme..
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
733b1ea
|
course it was angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
4939608
|
Nnamabia seemed fine to me, slipping his money into his anus and all.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
b2209d4
|
He reminded her of Obinze's expression for people he liked. Obi ocha. A clean heart.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
9c90e78
|
We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves,
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
e5e0080
|
What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity and money? What if their attitude was not "the boy has to pay," but rather, "whoever has more should pay." Of course, because of their historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today. But if we start raising children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred years, boys will no longer have the pressure of proving their masculinity by material means. But"
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
0a88eb7
|
A father is as much a verb as a mother.
|
|
motherhood
parenting
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
4c2d986
|
academics are not intellectuals; they are not curious, they build their stolid tents of specialized knowledge and stay securely in them.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
1d9ac15
|
He was not living his life; life was living him
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
bab57df
|
In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are n..
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
0110b2d
|
A husband is not a headmaster. A wife is not a schoolgirl. Permission and being allowed, when used one-sidedly - and they are nearly only used that way - should never be the language of an equal marriage.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
8a25d42
|
His letters dwell on me. I carry them around because they are long and detailed, because they remind me of my worthiness, because they tug at my feelings. Some months ago, he wrote that he did not want me to seek the whys, because there are some things that happen for which we can formulate no whys, for which whys simply do not exist and, perhaps, are not necessary. He did not mention Papa--he hardly mentions Papa in his letters--but I knew..
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
f53286e
|
Grandpapa used to say, about difficulties he had gone through, 'It did not kill me, it made me knowledgeable.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
7de1794
|
Try not to use words like "misogyny" and "patriarchy" too often with Chizalum. We feminists can sometimes be too jargony, and jargon can sometimes feel too abstract. Don't just label something misogynistic; tell her why it is, and tell her what would make it not be."
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
e60c5df
|
He had discovered that grief did not dim with time; it was instead a volatile state of being.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
4bc5b7c
|
Take cooking, for example. 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?
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
ae4654b
|
I'm Vincent," Obinze said, when they met in the back room. "I'm Dee." A pause. "No, you're not English. You can pronounce it. My real name is Duerdinhito, but the English, they cannot pronounce, so they call me Dee." "Duerdinhito," Obinze repeated. "Yes!" A delighted smile."
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
27f88ef
|
You don't even have to love your job; you can merely love what your job does for you - the confidence and self-fulfillment that come with doing and earning.
|
|
inspirational
job
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
52d454d
|
Teach her, too, to question the idea of women as a special species. I once heard an American politician, in his bid to show his support for women, speak of how women should be "revered" and "championed"--a sentiment that is all too common. Tell Chizalum that women actually don't need to be championed and revered; they just need to be treated as equal human beings. There is a patronizing undertone to the idea of women needing to be "champion..
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
d6cdeee
|
I had examined him that day, too, looking away when his eyes met mine, for signs of difference, of godlessness. I didn't see any, but I was sure they were there somewhere. They had to be.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
55c20ab
|
Do not measure her on a scale of what a girl should be. Measure her on a scale of being the best version of herself.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
502efc7
|
She began to like him because he liked her.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
813e3a6
|
She heard his words like a melody and she felt herself breathing unevenly, gulping at the air. She would not cry, it was ridiculous to cry after so long, but her eyes were filling with tears and there was a boulder in her chest and a stinging in her throat. The tears felt itchy. She made no sound. He took her hand in his, both clasped on the table, and between them silence grew, an ancient silence that they both knew. She was inside this si..
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
32042a2
|
The more civilians you bomb, the more resistance you grow.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
a0afd56
|
Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real live..
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
9ef3c5c
|
We watch films in class," she told Obinze. "They talk about films here as if films are as important as books. So we watch films and then we write a response paper and almost everybody gets an A. Can you imagine? These Americans are not serious"
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
dabecc5
|
He spent too much time mourning what could have been and questioning what should be.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
8f93dde
|
It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love was familial, somehow linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
57f2984
|
There are people, she once wrote, who think that we cannot rule ourselves because the few times we tried, we failed, as if all the others who rule themselves today got it right the first time. It is like telling a crawling baby who tries to walk, and then falls back on his buttocks, to stay there. As if the adults walking past him did not all crawl, once.
|
|
prejudice
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
3420f28
|
Mama had greeted him the traditional way that women were supposed to, bending low and offering him her back so that he would pat it with his fan made of the soft, straw-colored tail of an animal. Back home that night, Papa told Mama that it was sinful. You did not bow to another human being. It was an ungodly tradition, bowing to an Igwe. So, a few days later, when we went to see the bishop at Awka, I did not kneel to kiss his ring. I wante..
|
|
religion
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
9cf2aca
|
He spoke so effortlessly, as if his mouth were a musical instrument that just let sound out when touched, when opened.
|
|
mannerisms
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
b3a5522
|
You knew you had become comfortable when you told him that you watched Jeopardy on the restaurant TV and that you rooted for the following, in this order: women of color, black men, and white women, before, finally, white men--which meant you never rooted for white men.
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
|
9f8364c
|
Yes, good. There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You've never even accepted that the man is ugly," Kainene said. There was a small smile on her face and then she was laughing, and Olanna could not help but laugh too, because it was not what she had wanted to hear and because hearing it had made her feel better."
|
|
|
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |