Status Updates From علينا جميعا أن نصبح نسويين

love love love

listening to the audiobook (narrated by adichie herself) and her voice is so soothing and elegant

“ culture does not make people. people make culture. if it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture then we can and must make it our culture.”

“ some people say oh but women have the real power bottom power. But bottom power is not power at all because the woman with bottom power is actually not powerful. She just has a good route to tap another person‘s power.”

“ of course I am a human being, but there are particular things that happened to me in the world because I am a woman.”

“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. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have for centuries been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”

“ what if in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender, but if we focus on interest instead of gender?”

“We teach girls shame… we make them feel as though by being born female they are already guilty of something.”

“ we are all social beings we internalize ideas from our socialization. Even the language we use illustrates this. The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership.”