Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as “the most prominent” of a “procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [who] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature.
Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also the author of the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck.
Chimamanda believes that women can achieve so much more than what they are told.
Here are 30 Inspiring Chimamanda Adichie Quotes
“I think it’s very important for that a woman start out with the premise that she matters equally. I think that’s really important. And if you start out with that premise, then the decisions you make will fall into place, in a way. I say that because I think many societies condition women to think of themselves as just slightly below men, and then it makes it easier to justify many of the things women are deprived of. And we decide to say, the premise is different. The premise is full equality.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Feminism isn’t a cloak that I put on in the morning and take off at certain times. It’s who I am. I look at the world through eyes that are very alert to gender injustice, and I always will.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I don’t want to sit with someone who thinks that women are objects. I just don’t want to.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I want to be hopeful. And in general, I am hopeful, but there’s a sense that America is quite backwards when it comes to gender. There are a number of countries that have had women leaders, and it still feels like such an insurmountable thing in America. I think we need to have more women in positions of political authority or political power.” Chimamanda Adichie
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“I would often think to myself, ‘Why are women and girls made to care about people who they genuinely don’t care about?” Chimamanda Adichie
“It’s not about individual women; it’s about a system.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I think there is a kind of reflexive hostility about even the word ‘feminism.’ It brings out an ugly hostility in people like you will not believe. And it also brings out something unreasonable… people get very heated.” Chimamanda Adichie
“For progress to be made, I think it’s necessary to reach out to people who don’t necessarily agree.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I know I’m able to have empathy for men who have been assaulted, who’ve suffered. I don’t need to imagine that they’re my brother or my husband.” Chimamanda Adichie
“The whole goal of feminism is to become redundant. My dream is for a world where I won’t have to call myself a feminist because there will be gender justice. And to get there, it has to be a mass movement.” Chimamanda Adichie
“First we need to calm down, breathe, and get over ourselves.” Chimamanda Adichie
“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” Chimamanda Adichie
“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.” Chimamanda Adichie
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“It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.” Chimamanda Adichie
“The manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not.” Chimamanda Adichie
“There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Culture does not make people. People make culture.” Chimamanda Adichie
“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.” Chimamanda Adichie
“I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.” Chimamanda Adichie
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“Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Never ever accept ‘Because You Are A Woman’ as a reason for doing or not doing anything.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Your standard ideologies will not always fit your life. Because life is messy.” Chimamanda Adichie
“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.” Chimamanda Adichie
“Teach her that the idea of ‘gender roles’ is absolute nonsense. Do not ever tell her that she should or should not do something because she is a girl. ‘Because you are a girl’ is never reason for anything. Ever.” Chimamanda Adichie
Thank you for reading, I hope you found these inspiring. Which of these quotes encouraged you to be strong?
