Quote

For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Age: 47
Born: 1977
Born: January 1
Feminist
Novelist
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Groups
Divided
Century
Solution
Two
Acknowledge
Problem
Fairs
Human
Fair
Proceeded
Humans
Solutions
Oppress
World
Group
Exclude
Beings
Centuries

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The only reason race matters is because of racism.
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I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.
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When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
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You can have ambition But not too much You should aim to be successful But not too successful Otherwise you will threaten the man
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She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.
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The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.
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I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'
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The idea that sex is something a woman gives a man, and she loses something when she does that, which again for me is nonsense. I want us to raise girls differently where boys and girls start to see sexuality as something that they own, rather than something that a boy takes from a girl.
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Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.
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Culture does not make people - people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, we must make it our culture. [...] A feminist is a man or a woman who says, 'yes there is a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it. We must do better.'
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The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.
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Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in real African culture, before it was tainted by the west, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
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I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn't that surprising that the social realities of their existence would be part of the story.
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If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair access to the pond. I wonder whether I would realize that while African nations have a failure of leadership, they also have dynamic people with agency and voices.
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I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America
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I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.
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If you followed the media you'd think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that's not the case so it's important to engage with the other Africa.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.
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Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.
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