For women and feminists across the world, it’s been long years, decades and centuries of battling to overthrow the patriarchal system.
It’s been a difficult and interesting past couple of years of being a revolutionary in a system with a larger than life desire to rid women off realizing their human rights.
A system that won’t allow women to assume political offices, a system that makes women feel unsafe walking in their neighborhood at night, a system that perpetuates old-fashioned patriarchal ideology to protect men who lack common decency, men who rape and pine after young girls.
Clink glasses to International women’s day, a day to acknowledge, recognize the cultural, social, economic and political achievements of women. A day to brag about our awesomeness and strength.
Today we recognize a Novelist and a Feminist campaigner, someone who has defied odds with her words in a world that seeks to silence the woman.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu State, Nigeria in 1977. Her parents, Grace and James Adichie both worked at the University of Nigeria while Chimamanda was a child. The Adichie family lost everything including her grandparents to the Nigerian Civil war. This Civil war influenced her book ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ published in 2006.
This book brilliantly and interestingly talked about the Biafran war (1967-1970). This book was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and also won the Orange Prize. The novel is also a New York Times Notable Book.
Chimamanda had her early education at the University of Nigeria Secondary School after which she studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria. When Chimanda was 19, she moved from, Nigeria to the United States where she studied communications and political science in Philadelphia at Drexel University.
She completed her Master’s degree in Creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and also got a Masters of Arts Degree in African Studies from Yale University.
The 42-year-old novelist has written several other award-winning novels like Americanah, Purple Hibiscus, and The Things Around Your Neck. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages.
Chimamanda has traveled all over the world to give Ted talk and also lectures. In 2013, she gave a lecture on We Should All Be Feminists. This discusses society’s paradigm of the ideal male and female.
‘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.” An excerpt from the lecture. In this lecture, the novelist calls herself a ‘happy African Feminist’. She also said Feminism shouldn’t be an ‘elite cult’, but a ‘party full of different feminisms’.
In Nigeria, it is almost impossible to talk about feminism and not mention Chimamanda. Her talk We Should All Be Feminists stirred a world conversation about feminism. This was later converted into a book in 2014.
No doubt Chimamanda is tackling the dominant ideology of patriarchy a publication at a time. 3 years ago, she published an epistolary ‘’Dear Ijeawele or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions’’. This book reviewed her suggestions on why we all should be feminists.
The award-winning author has done so much for herself and made a name for herself around the world. Cheers to women around the world like Chimamanda.