The other day in class, Mrs. Quinet mentioned that many prominent Nigerian writers are women, which prompted me to think about Chimamanda Adichie, who is pretty awesome. She wrote an essay titled We Should All Be Feminists, which I would definitely recommend—but if you don’t feel like reading the essay, here’s a link to the TEDx talk it’s based on!
https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_we_should_all_be_feminists
Beyonce also included part of Adichie’s talk in one of her songs. Although she credits Beyonce with spreading the message to a wider audience, here are Adichie’s thoughts on it: “"Still, her type of feminism is not mine, as it is the kind that, at the same time, gives quite a lot of space to the necessity of men. I think men are lovely, but I don’t think that women should relate everything they do to men: did he hurt me, do I forgive him, did he put a ring on my finger? We women are so conditioned to relate everything to men. Put a group of women together and the conversation will eventually be about men. Put a group of men together and they will not talk about women at all, they will just talk about their own stuff. We women should spend about 20 per cent of our time on men, because it’s fun, but otherwise we should also be talking about our own stuff.”
Adichie grew up in an Igbo family and incorporates experiences from her family life into her essay. So my point is, she’s really cool, and she definitely taught me to broaden my own thinking in terms of feminism and gave me a different perspective. Again, highly recommend checking out her talk!
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Addictie is indeed pretty awesome. I actually found her essay when we were in London last year. We'd been perusing a bookstore at Chloe's and my insistence, and I'd picked up a book called I Call Myself a Feminist with stories from 25 different women under 30, mostly ones who lived in Great Britain. The guy who was ringing us up started talking to us about some other writing we should check out. Sadly I did not have enough British money to get Adichie's essay right then, but as soon as I got home I ordered it off of Amazon. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet!
Adichie includes anecdotes about her experience with feminism, including ones directly related to her experience as a Nigerian woman. I see a lot of mentions in Achebe's work that don't necessarily portray women as being strong and independent in Igbo culture...at all. I think reading Adichie's essay would be pretty eye-opening and perhaps would be nice to read specifically in addition to Achebe's work. Adichie's overall point is that "feminism" isn't a nasty word. It's not a word to be said with a sneer. It's a word that should define us all, and hopefully someday in the future, it will, across all countries and cultures.
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