Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
2017
- social aspects
- feminist theory
- parental influences
- social conditions
- mothers and daughters
- child rearing
- feminism
- women
- nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction=2017-03-26
- women, social conditions
The story
Receiving a letter from a friend asking her how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist, Adichie responded with fifteen suggestions for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. Her suggestions ranged from options for non-stereotyped toy options, to debunking myths that women are somehow biologically programmed to be in the kitchen instead of having a career. Adichie's letter will start an urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.
What it’s like
Short, direct prose with a warm, conversational candor sits on the page like a letter from a friend across a kitchen table, the voice unhurried and intimate even when its arguments are sharp. The book is brief enough to finish in one sitting, set out as numbered suggestions that each open onto a small, lived scene: a toy aisle, a classroom, a household where chores fall along gender lines. It suits a quiet Sunday morning with coffee, an evening read in a lamplit chair, or a slow reread when you want to think rather than be swept along. The register is earnest and affectionate rather than combative, with humour threaded through the anecdotes and a steady insistence on honesty between mothers and daughters, parents and children. Intensity is minimal: no violence, no sexual content, nothing frightening, though it discusses misogyny and gender inequality directly and without softening. It is for readers who want a clear, humane argument about raising children to be independent, and for anyone who likes essays that feel like advice given with love.
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