In Feminism Lite, that men are naturally superior but should be expected to ‘treat women well’. No. No. No. There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman’s well-being. Feminism Lit...
If you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women. For X please insert words like anger, ambition, loudness, stubbornness,...
Happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
Hair away from her face, as though one hand could not possibly tame all that hair. How nice to meet you, she said to Ifemelu, smiling, as they shook hands, her hand small,
Feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage: You hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, you think women should always be in charge, you don’t wear makeup, you don’t shave, you’re a...
But it was the commercials that captivated her. She ached for the lives they showed, lives full of bliss, where all problems had sparkling solutions in shampoos and cars and packaged foods, and in her...
All understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not...
A clear link between education and dignity, between the hard, obvious things that are printed in books and the soft, subtle things that lodge themselves into the soul.
You wanted to feel disdain, to show it as you brought his order, because white people who liked Africa too much and those who liked Africa too little were the same—condescending.
You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me? Aunty Ifeka said. Your life belongs to you and you alone, soso gi.
Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy.
Yes, good. There’s something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You’ve never even accepted that the man is ugly, Kainene said. There was a sma...
When you visit the home of an American with some money, they will offer to show you their house.
When you use the nude color of underwear and Band-Aids, do you already know that it will not match your skin?
When Philip complained about the French couple building a house next to his in Cornwall, Emenike asked, 'Are they between you and the sunset?
What I’ve noticed being here is that many English people are in awe of America but also deeply resent it, Obinze added. Perfectly true, Phillip said, nodding at Obinze. Perfectly true. It’s the resent...
We watch films in class, she told Obinze. They talk about films here as if films are as important as books. So we watch films and then we write a response paper and almost everybody gets an A. Can you...
We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about their girlfriends. But our daughters’ boyfriends? God forbid. (But we of course expec...
We teach girls shame. Close your legs. Cover yourself. We make them feel as though by being born female, they are already guilty of something.
We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likeable. We spend too much time telling girls th...