✨Book : We Should All Be Feminists
✨Author : Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
✨Genre : Nonfiction
✨Pages : 52
✨Publication: 2014, Harper Collins
✨Format : paperback
✨Book Cost : ₹225 (bought for ₹130)

5 /5

Blogpost by Dhanu

We Should All Be Feminists was originally delivered as a TED Talk at TedxEuston in 2012. It was then published into a small book which stays calm with huge depiction of societal oppression on women in the name of gender. When I re-read the same book in 2021, I felt the same interpretation of mine with evolved ideologies. Time and experience enhance once perception. And shared my reading updates in the stories of my Bookstagram handle, there I decided to post my perspective of this book.

It was back in 2018, We were sitting in our Theory & Criticism session, about to plunge into the ideas of Adichie. Our professor thought to have a session on the very same Ted talk by Adichie. I was so grateful to be able to refine the very same words through the voice of Adichie. It was a few minutes long speech by her yet to create an enough effectiveness. When the projector started to roll with the voice of Adichie, who was standing before the podium on the stage, my eyes started to move through the notes of the speech. There drew me into Adichie.

After listening and reading simultaneously, I was certain of one thing that everyone should be a humanist. We should respect each other being’s space, capabilities, emotions, and dreams. Moreover, they must be valued as the fellow beings. Nowadays Feminism is being mistracked as a result of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Everyone has experienced certain denial at some point in their lives. Calling someone “arrogant” for expressing their principles or denying their rights or disparaging their creative outcome will always knock their confidence down to the depths of hell.

I believe that is more pronounced in one gender due to patriarchy influence on older generation (which is unconsciously suffocating the present generation!!). When the denial of one’s self is being repeated in the name of gender, there rises every -ism and -ist. And I strongly believe when the rights are balanced, there is no need for such -isms or any other terms. Never put our fellow beings into denial or make them feel as low being.

This specific book is not particularly about being a Feminist (you will see this when you understand the depth) but about how not to be with others.

PS: This is my own perception which I felt while reading the book. If you have any other perspective about the views, I respect that and I expect the same.

Lines that I hammered me deep:

Each time they ignore me, I feel invisible. I feel upset. I want to tell them that I am just as human as the man, just as worthy of acknowledgement. 20

Once, at a meeting, she said she had felt slighted by her boss, who had ignored her comments and then praised something similar when it came from a man. 23

I know a woman who hates domestic work, but she pretends that she likes it, because she has been taught that to be ‘good wife material’, she has to be – to use that Nigerian word – homely. And then she got married. And her husband’s family began to complain that she had changed. Actually, she had not changed. She just got tired of pretending to be what she was not. 34