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Inspiration September 29, 2017
"I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there."
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie became famous almost instantaneously. Her first novel, “Purple Hibiscus,” won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She then released the novels “Half of a Yellow Sun” and “Americanah,” which received awards and praise such as The Orange Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.
It wasn’t until her TED Talks went viral until people really knew about Adichie.
Her second talk “We Should All Be Feminists” was sampled in Beyoncé’s song “Flawless.”
From then on, Adichie became somewhat of a celebrity.
She’s appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Granta and the Financial Times.
As a black woman from Nigeria, she mainly focuses on topics of racism and sexism. She also never stops trying to fix these problems. Her TED Talks on feminism and racism are discussed and dissected in schools.
She also gives back by hosting writing workshops in Lagos, Nigeria.
Overall, Adichie has a powerful effect on people. She’s a natural born star and leader. According to Vogue, Salman Rushdie met Adichie at a PEN literary festival in New York and was struck by her confidence and authority.
“She very much held her own, and spoke fluently and powerfully, and all of us there that day could see that someone very remarkable had just arrived,” Rushdie said. “A star is born, I remember thinking, and so it was.”
Adichie isn’t afraid to empower women to stand up for their beliefs. Her TED Talks speak for all feminists.
So, we compiled a list of famous Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie quotes to motivate the star in you.
“I am a person who believes in asking questions, in not conforming for the sake of conforming. I am deeply dissatisfied – about so many things, about injustice, about the way the world works – and in some ways, my dissatisfaction drives my storytelling.”
Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person.
“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”
“Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.”
“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Your life belongs to you and you alone.”
“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.”
“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”
“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.”
“Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.”
“Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femaleness and my femininity. And I want to be respected in all of my femaleness because I deserve to be.”
“We teach girls shame. ‘Close your legs. Cover yourself.’ We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.”
“Some people ask: ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general – but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. 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.”
“I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie teaches women to know their worth, fight for their respect and love their individuality.
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