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69c4a93
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She wanted to interrupt and tell him how unnecessary it was, this bloodying and binding, this turning faith into a pugilistic exercise; to tell him that life was a struggle with ourselves more than with a spear-wielding Satan; that belief was a choice for our conscience always to be sharpened.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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bf05e4b
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When Philip complained about the French couple building a house next to his in Cornwall, Emenike asked, 'Are they between you and the sunset?
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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720e7a6
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Anglo-Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as WASP, and American Black is always on the bottom, and what's in the middle depends on time and place. (Or as that marvelous rhyme goes: if you're white, you're all right; if you're brown, stick around; if you're black, get back!) Americans assume that everyone will get their tribalism. But it takes a while to figure it all out. So in undergrad, we had a visiting speaker and a classmate whispers to ..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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4a7596b
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But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c4f3b22
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I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-colour crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my window's netting. I heard Papa walk upstairs to his room for his afternoon siesta. I closed my eyes, sat still, waiting to hear him call Jaja, to hear Jaja go into his room. But af..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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65da0f9
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We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. 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 that you are not, especially in
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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b54ba37
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I lived in Boston until last year," he said, in a falsely low-key way, because "Boston" was code for Harvard (otherwise he would say MIT or Tufts or anywhere else), just as another woman said, "I was in New Haven," in that coy manner that pretended not to be coy, which meant that she had been at Yale."
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ivy-league
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a75772e
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The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said.
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jumping-monkey-hill
therapy
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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bb32273
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Why didn't she just ask 'Was it the white girl or the black girl?'" "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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9209423
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There was something brittle about her, and he feared she would snap apart at the slightest touch; she had thrown herself so fiercely into this, the erasing of memory, that it would destroy her.
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remembering
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d6ff09d
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I matter. I matter equally. Not 'if only'. Not 'as long as'. I matter equally. Full stop.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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6e13cf4
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the premise of chivalry is female weakness.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a7a2124
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I want to hold his hand, but I know he will shake it free. His eyes are too full of guilt to really see me, to see his reflection in my eyes, the reflection of my hero, the brother who tried always to protect me the best he could. He will never think that he did enough, and he will never understand that I do not think he should have done more.
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siblings
protection
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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ea9971e
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a clear link between education and dignity, between the hard, obvious things that are printed in books and the soft, subtle things that lodge themselves into the soul.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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858a0e2
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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..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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417ada5
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Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. . . 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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unease
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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51c7110
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Later Ginika said, "You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They'll believe all kinds of shit about Africa"
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americans
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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60f595f
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one of the first things her friend Ginika told her was that "fat" in America was a bad word, heaving with moral judgment"
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e75f200
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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.
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choice
americans
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e90d543
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I don't think love as a reason. I think love comes first and then the reasons follow.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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0ca76e5
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A cultura nao faz as pessoas. As pessoas fazem a cultura. Se uma humanidade inteira de mulheres nao faz parte da nossa cultura, entao temos que mudar nossa cultura.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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bb2cc69
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At first Ifemelu thought Kimberly's apologizing sweet, even if unnecessary, but she had begun to feel a flash of impatience, because Kimberly's repeated apologies were tinged with self-indulgence, as though she believed that she could, with apologies, smooth all the scalloped surfaces of the world.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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d1d2f73
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And never say that Chudi is "babysitting" - people who babysit are people for whom the baby is not a primary responsibility."
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a39309a
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Recently a young woman was gang-raped in a university in Nigeria, and the response of many young Nigerians, both male and female, was something like this: 'Yes, rape is wrong, but what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?' Let us, if we can, forget the horrible inhumanity of that response. These Nigerians have been raised to think of woman as inherently guilty. And they have been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men a..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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a7dca4c
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I am trying to unlearn many lessons of gender I internalized while growing up. But I sometimes still feel vulnerable in the face of gender expectations. The
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c0024b5
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It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always "say something" in class, no matter what. [...] They never said "I don't know". They said, instead, "I'm not sure," which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge. And they ambled, these Americans, they walked without rhythm. They avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say "Ask somebody upstairs"; they said "You might wa..
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irony
americans
language
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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0fa8e0d
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But she had not had a bold epiphany and there was no cause; it was simply that layer after layer of discontent had settled in her, and formed a mass that now propelled her. She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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b260ab9
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in Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to 'treat women well'. No. No. No. There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman's well-being. Feminism Lite uses the language of 'allowing'. Theresa May is the British prime minister and here is how a progressive British newspaper described her husband: 'Philip May is known in politics as a man who has taken a back seat and allowed his wife, Theres..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c64a945
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Please do not ever put this pressure on your daughter. We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be 'nice' to people who do them harm. Many girls think of the 'feelings' of those who are hurting them. This is the catastr..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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c11755d
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Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans.
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feminism
feminism-lite
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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79fde97
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Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy, but it is not an achievement.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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7a86a36
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It brought to him a disorienting strangeness, because his mind had not changed at the same pace as his life, and he felt a hollow space between himself and the person he was supposed to be.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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22738cd
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Gender roles are so deeply conditioned in us that we will often follow them even when they chafe against our true desires, our needs, our happiness.
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gender-roles
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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173e1b9
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Olanna felt the slow sadness of missing a person who was still there.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e6273a8
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The higher you go, the fewer women there are.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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0d2f7ad
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We police girls. We praise girls for virginity but we don't praise boys for virginity (and it makes me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out, since the loss of virginity is a process that usually involves two people of opposite genders).
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feminist
girls
virginity
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2522f21
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She wanted Azuka to learn the ways of these foreigners, since people ruled over others not because they were better people but because they had better guns;
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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2bd292e
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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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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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829ce9c
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Show her that she does not need to be liked by everyone. Tell her that if someone does not like her, there will be someone else who will. Teach her that she is not merely an object to be liked or disliked, she is also a subject who can like and dislike.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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e1abaa1
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Ikenna, I have come to realize, is a man who carries with him the weight of what could have been.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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99f3279
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A young Nigerian woman once told me that she had for years behaved 'like a boy' - she liked football and was bored by dresses - until her mother forced her to stop her 'boyish' interests. Now she is grateful to her mother for helping her start behaving like a girl. The story made me sad. I wondered what parts of herself she had needed to silence and stifle, and I wondered about what her spirit had lost, because what she called 'behaving lik..
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5f776f4
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She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size. She told him how she very much wanted God to exist but feared He did not, how she worried that she should know what she wanted to do with her life but did not
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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5b267fc
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Sometimes, mothers, so conditioned to be all and do all, are complicit in diminishing the role of fathers.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
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1f0a10e
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But why do we say nothing?" Ujunwa asked. She raised her voice and looked at the others. "Why do we always say nothing?"
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racism
sexism
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |