I came across this book through Rachel Rambling On‘s instagram page. You can visit her blog by clicking here, she’s much better at this kinda stuff than I am.
We Should All Be Feminists, written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a short adapted from the TEDxEuston conference that Adiche spoke at. It’s an interesting read whether or not you entirely follow the feminist movement – and was certainly an eye opener for myself.
The short
it composed of childhood memories, major events in Adichie’s life and most of all, her coming of a feminist. The book-length essay aims to give a definition to 21st century version of feminist, which is practically an impossible task given that the term has blossomed a thousand different ways. It’s like a rose, the concept is nice but sometimes you get a thorn stuck in your hand and you try to stay away from it.
That’s exactly my experience with feminism. In my time researching, mostly on Google (my bad), the term has never given me any hope but rather a need to steer as far as I can from it. Why, you may ask? These are the women fighting for you and your rights. Yes, I understand that, but like I said, after trying to research the movement, all I found was people complaining that Legend Of Zelda protagonist, Link, was a male and that was unfair. BuzzFeed posting a million videos about why men are the worst and, in the shortest way of explaining, how we would all be better off without men. My argument was this, and still is at some stages, why are “we” fighting to be better, rather than fighting for equality?
We Should All Be Feminists is written proof that feminism isn’t about wanting a female role in a video game, or that men are the worst creatures in the world. It’s written proof that in fact, there is a definition of feminism, somewhere, that still stands for equality. Adichie tells us of her experiences alongside a male in Nigeria, where she goes ignored a majority of the time because of the simple fact she’s a woman. Nigeria is still, like, 100 years in the past, where men are the bread-makers that supply the money and women are just for pleasure rather than company. Saying that, there are assumptions in this book that I do not agree with, but there are some major points that really inspired me and made me think “I should be helping to curb this 1920’s way of pushing women to the side.”
This is a book for anyone. It’s a quick and informative read that offers insight into some of the major issues that still reside in the world. It can be for feminist beginners, like myself
, or for those who have been behind the movement since it gained popularity, or maybe
even before that. It’s not filled with man-hate and woman domination, instead it gives you the facts and at the end of it, it’s your decision whether or not something needs to be done. It’s changed my mind on something I was adamant to stay away from.
If you’ve read the book, I’d love to hear what you thought of it. Or even if your a feminist, I want to hear why. I want to start putting more effort into this movement than I previously have, just not in the I-want-to-shave-my-armpits and behead men way. You can see why I got scared of it, surely?
Post-Punk Press 