Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The award-winning author of We Should All Be Feminists and Americanah gives us this powerful statement about feminism today—written as a letter to a friend.

A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a childhood friend, a new mother who wanted to know how to raise her baby girl to be a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s letter of response: fifteen invaluable suggestions—direct, wryly funny, and perceptive—for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. Filled with compassionate guidance and advice, it gets right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century, and starts a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

A Skimm Reads Pick ● An NPR Best Book of the Year

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525434801
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/01/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	80
Sales rank:	72,448
Product dimensions:	4.40(w) x 6.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, Financial Times, and Zoetrope: All-Story. 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 was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Winner of Winners” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, both national bestsellers. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

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Introduction
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Excerpted from "Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions"
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Copyright © 2018 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Dear Ijeawele is a volume as fierce and illuminating as bringing up a confident daughter, both with love at their core.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“I love this book so much, for many reasons. Chimamanda is one of my favorite authors.” —Amber Tamblyn, GQ

“Adichie epitomizes and epistolizes our potential in Dear Ijeawele." —Sloane Crosely, Vanity Fair 

“Personal and urgent. . . . Adichie is passionate about equality. Her new book offers 15 ways that we can encourage girls to be strong, to plant seeds of feminism. But more than that, Adichie hopes the book will help ‘move us toward a world that is more gender equal.’ Doing so means knocking down ingrained assumptions about how men and women think and behave.” —The Washington Post

“Adichie’s suggestions are logical and stated clearly, full of her dry wit, and range from the obvious (‘Do it together’) to the bold (‘Reject likeability’). . . . As much as this is a book written to mothers of daughters, fathers of daughters would benefit from reading it, too; parents in general would do well to try to raise children who won't have to grow up and read it at all. . . . Powerful and life-affirming, offering wisdom for everyone.” —The Village Voice
 
“Adichie has partly written Dear Ijeawele to reclaim the word feminism from its abusers and misusers. Her advice is not only to provide children with alternatives—to empower boys and girls to understand there is no single way to be—but also to understand that the only universal in this world is difference.  Adichie is a brilliant novelist and a serious thinker, and she is also someone who makes no apology for her own trivial interests. Her understanding of feminism is intertwined with her understanding that we all want to be more than one thing.” —The Guardian

From the Publisher

Embedding us in the intimacy of a friendship, the prose makes reflections that might seem common sense in the abstract feel like discoveries.

The New York Times Book Review - Moira Weigel

★ 05/15/2017
"Teach her that the idea of 'gender roles' is absolute nonsense." This excellent series of essays is award-winning author Adichie's (Americanah) response to a friend's question on how to raise her daughter as a feminist. Adichie shines a light on gender issues in modern society through wise advice dispensed with droll wit and deep earnestness. Writing with tender conviction about encouraging girls to pick up a helicopter instead of, or in addition to, a doll, Adichie explains that to be feminist, women do not have to give up their femininity. We may choose to be brides, but we should also be taught to be independent, that marriage isn't the only option. In other words, a mother should remain her own person, refusing to give up her identity, which is often used to justify oppression. But it's not just women learning to navigate the confusing waters of gender identity; Adichie also offers guidance for teaching men how to embrace feminism and reject rigid gender roles, too. VERDICT A fast read and vital addition to all collections. Anyone interested in social change will enjoy.—Venessa Hughes, Buffalo, NY

Library Journal

January LaVoy’s narration of this short work is intentional, assertively warm, and grounded. Given her charge, she has to be. Adichie’s childhood friend, Ijeawele, asks how to raise her newborn daughter as a feminist. This is not a light question. The author offers 15 suggestions; it’s LaVoy’s job to deliver them with decisive clarity. And she hits the mark. There is wisdom in her voice conveying a lived experience. Most often she repeats the phrase “teach her how” or "teach her to." Her imperative tone signals the necessity to be deliberate and loving. Adichie’s content and LaVoy’s tone remind listeners that Ijeawele is more than a mother—she’s a woman who is navigating her daughter through a world filled with assumptions and questionable social and cultural norms. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2017 - AudioFile