In teaching her about oppression, be careful not to turn the oppressed into saints. Saintliness is not a prerequisite for dignity. People who are unkind and dishonest still deserve dignity. Property rights for Nigerian women, for example, is a major feminist issue, and the women do not need to be good and angelic to be allowed their property rights.
– Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2016) Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, p. 58.
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Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Notes on Grief
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You remember how a journalist unilaterally decided to give me a new name—Mrs. Husband's Surname—on learning that I was married, and how I asked him to stop because that was not my name. I will never forget the smoldering hostility from some Nigerian women in response to this. It is interesting that there was more hostility, in general, from women than from men, many of whom insisted on calling me what was not my name, as though to silence my voice.
I wondered about that, and thought that perhaps for many of them, my choice represented a challenge to their idea of what is the norm.
Even some friends made statements like "You are successful and so it is okay to keep your name." Which made me wonder: Why does a woman have to be successful at work in order to justify keeping her name?
The truth is that I have not kept my name because I am successful. Had I not had the good fortune to be published and widely read, I would still have kept my name. I have kept my name because it is my name. I have kept my name because I like my name.
There are people who say "Well, your name is also about patriarchy because it is your father's name." Indeed. But the point is simply this: Whether it came from my father or from the moon, it is the name that I have had since I was born, the name with which I traveled my life's milestones, the name I have answered to since that first day I went to kindergarten on a hazy morning and my teacher said, "Answer 'present' if you hear your name. Number one: “Adichie!”
-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
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Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief
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I don’t want to be a sweetheart. I want to be the fucking love of your life.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
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How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, from Notes on Grief
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