When I go back home now, when I go back to Nigeria now, I get off the plane in Lagos and I just don’t think of race. I get on the plane and arrive in Atlanta, and immediately I’m aware of race. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
Because gender can be uncomfortable, there are easy ways to close this conversation. Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes – that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
There can be an extremist idea of purity. It’s so easy to fall afoul of the ridiculously high standard set there. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
Nobody just leaves medical school, especially given it’s fiercely competitive to get in. But I had a sister who was a doctor, another who was a pharmacist, a brother who was an engineer. So my parents already had sensible children who would be able to make an actual living, and I think they felt comfortable sacrificing their one strange child. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
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. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
To return to the books of my childhood is to yield to the strain of nostalgia that is curious about the self I once was. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
I don’t think it’s a good thing to talk about women’s issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women because I don’t think that’s true. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in ‘real’ African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
I look young. I heard this said so often that it became irritating. I once worked as a babysitter for a woman who, the first time we met, said she didn’t want somebody in high school. I was 22. Later, I realised that in certain places being female and looking ‘young’ meant it was more difficult to be taken seriously, so I turned to make-up. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Read Quote
