Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Quotes - Page 2

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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The longer she spent in America, the better she had become at distinguishing, sometimes from looks and gait, but mostly from bearing and demeanor, that fine-grained mark that culture stamps on people. (Chapter 17)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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 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 caring for one's child was the exception rather than the rule.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
femelu could not understand this, her mother’s ability to tell herself stories about her reality that did not even resemble her reality
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
...I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary. The semiotic dialetics of intertextual modernity. Which makes no sense at all. Sometimes I feel that they live in a parallel universe of academia speaking acadamese instead of English and they don't really know what's happening in the real world.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ifemelu would also come to learn that, for Kimberly, the poor were blameless. Poverty was a gleaming thing; she could not conceive of poor people being vicious or nasty because their poverty had canonized them, and the greatest saints were the foreign poor.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother’s behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village woman; she should not keep thinking of all the retorts she could have made instead of just standing mutely in that kitchen. But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ma? I think you have the spirit of husband-repelling. You are too hard, ma, you will not find a husband. But my pastor can destroy that spirit.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
People often told him how humble he was, but they did not mean real humility, it was merely that he did not flaunt his membership in the wealthy club, did not exercise the rights it brought—to be rude, to be inconsiderate, to be greeted rather than to greet—and because so many others like him exercised those rights, his choices were interpreted as humility.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If the sun refuses to rise we will make it rise
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
She cries quietly, her shoulders heaving up and down, not the kind of loud sobbing that the women Chika knows do, the kind that screams Hold me and comfort me because I cannot deal with this alone. The woman's crying is private, as though she is carrying out a necessary ritual that involves no one else.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A book did not qualify as literature unless it had polysyllabic words and incomprehensible passages.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we ´should' be rather than recognizing how we are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. 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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Other men might respond by saying: Okay, this is interesting, but I don’t think like that. I don’t even think about gender. Maybe not. And that is part of the problem. That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
​If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitors, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy. If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporations, it starts to seem 'natural' that only men should be heads of corporations. ​
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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
Gender matters everywhere in the world. And I would like today to ask what we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We define masculinity in very narrow way. Masculinity is hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak-- a hard man.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please these men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A man is likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative and creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over it becomes normal.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands.So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, just as worthy of acknowledgement. These are the little things, but sometimes it is the little things that sting the most.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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
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.)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult to join? If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as different from the majority of your race? If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you? If you take a job with an affirmative action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think that you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race? Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Ifemelu thought about the expression "sweet girl." Sweet girl meant that, for a long time, Don had molded Ranyinudo into a malleable shape, or that she had allowed him to think he had.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Now imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.'" "Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life's choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, yet we don't teach boys to do the same?""We are all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
We're all social beings. We internalize ideas from our socialization.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value to difference. And the reason for this is not to be fair or to be nice but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world. And by teaching her about difference, you are equipping her to survive in a diverse world. She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world and that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not know – we cannot know – everything about life. Both religion and science have spaces for the things we do not know, and it is enough to make peace with that. Teach her never to universalise her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realisation that difference is normal.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
...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 I strongly reject. Domestic work and caregiving should be gender-neutral, and we should be asking not whether a woman can 'do it all' but how best to support parents in their dual duties at work and at home.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A man who would be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman's well-being.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Teach her to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Make dressing a question of taste and attractiveness instead of a question of morality.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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 would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Tanzanian told her that all fiction was therapy, some sort of therapy, no matter what anybody said.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If we don't place the straitjacket of gender roles on young children, we give them space to reach their full potential.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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 the way, would often talk about his experience as a black man. (To which I should probably have responded, "Why not your experiences as a man or as a human being? Why a black man?")
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Sometimes life begins when the marriage ends
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Marriage can be a good thing, a source of joy, love, and mutual support. But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage, but we don’t teach boys to do the same?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I am just as human as the man.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie