Chimanda Ngozi Adichie
The first woman I
want to introduce to you all is someone who has inspired me by her insightful
talks and written work on equality and gender issues. She is Chimanda Ngozi
Adichie, an award-winning writer who is well known from her books Purple
Hibiscus, Half A Yellow Sun and Americanah.
Chimanda Ngozi Adichie was born
in Nigeria, and at the age of nineteen, left for the States to study
communication and political science at the Eastern Connecticut State
University. After finishing her degree, she went on to study creative writing
at Johns Hopkins University, from which she has a master's degree. In addition,
she has an MA in African studies from Yale University.
"We
should all be feminists"
I first run into Adichie’s work
when I was browsing through popular TED talks, and her talk “We should all be
feminists” struck a chord with me. Her examples of common issues of gender
inequality in Nigeria were surprisingly similar to what women all over the
world go through as well. The examples might differ slightly but the injustice
and inequality behind the acts and cultural values and practices are ultimately
the same. Realizing that most of the problems that we have with gender
inequality are universal and not restricted to specific countries, cultures or
religions, gave me a deeper level of understanding of the issues and their
background. It also helped me see how similar some of the old and fundamental
values in our cultures are, even though from first look, one might not expect
to find a lot of commonality between European and African cultures. That was
obviously my ignorance affecting my worldview.
"Culture
does not make people, people make culture"
Adichie also talks about how our
culture, that keeps women subservient to men, has not changed even though we as
people have changed. My own thoughts have often times followed similar paths. I
believe there are a lot of cultural practices and values that should be
maintained as a part of who where are as people, but only as long as they do
not go against basic human rights, or discriminate or demean anyone in any
other way. It is only natural that our values and thus our culture changes with
the world as we learn more and evolve as people. If the practices and ideals
from the previous generations are not seen as fair and rightful anymore, then
they should be let go of. We are living on the 21st century, it would be
foolish to cling on to the values from the 19th.
What sets Adichie apart from many
other feminists is her understanding of how gender inequality is a complex
problem that is connected to other issues as well, such as those of race and
religion. She also discusses the old fashioned and unrealistic expectations of
men, including them in the issues of gender and how these aspects should also
change to fit the world we live in today. Fundamentally, Adichie want’s people
to be seen as individuals, as humans, rather than by their gender.
I end this portrait on Adichie´s
definition of a feminist, which is one I agree with myself:
“A
feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes there is a problem with gender as it
is today and we must fix it, we must do better”.
The sources for this post are below so you can dig in a bit deeper if you like. I especially recommend the TED talks:
Interview in
the book “200 Women” by Geoff
Blackwell and Ruth Hobday, Chronicle books, ISBN: 978-1-4521-6658-2, p. 64-65
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