From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today – written as a letter to a friend. A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions–compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive–for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century. It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.
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Honestly, this has to be one of my favourite feminist titles. Every word Chimamanda writes speaks to me on a soul level. I do not yet have children, but the words on every page resonate with me. It's as if she has planted an undying seed for how I want to bring my children up and how I want them to see me and the world in which we live. She isn't so much an advocate of "modern parenting" but a voice of reason in a world gone mad with political correctness. The main ideal Adiche puts across is that acceptance should be the ultimate goal when raising children. Her 'chapters' on mothers and fathers being equal in parenting really got me thinking about the current state of parenting and of what I see happen in the relationships of my friends when a child comes into the equation. When she speaks about women needing to let go of the resentment they feel towards men for not doing things to a good enough level and letting men take responsibility for their role as a father opened my eyes even further to our current social state and the fact that more often than not women take on so much of the work load with children but often do nothing to promote a healthier parenting situation.
All in all, I feel like this book really makes you question the currently acceptable social standards of a mother mothering and a Father 'babysitting' and I think it's a book more people should pick up and read, if only to be more informed. - Lisa (QBD)
Guest, 22/07/2017
