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A review by ladybookamore
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2.0
Dear Ijeawele by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is another popular short read, along with We Should All Be Feminists. I picked it up as a part of my #readinghumanity project after the Overbooked (@potboilercoffeehouse ) selected this book as #botm . While We Should All Be Feminists listed down the importance of #feminism among men and women, Dear Ijeawele jots down ways to raise a #feminist child.
While I was reading Dear Ijeawele, I was reminded of a brief conversation I had with my college senior about We Should All Be Feminists. After reading that book, she had said, "Well, there is nothing new about it." And this is exactly how I reacted to Dear Ijeawele. Indeed there is nothing new or different about this Feminist manifesto. In fact, most of the suggestions in Dear Ijeawele is obsessed with the idea of "gender roles". This very term recurs throughout the first 5-6 suggestions, rendering a monotony and dullness in the writing. Whether it is about gender biasness in colour-codes or toys, Dear Ijeawele seemed like a revision of what we already know about the patriarchal society we are in. Moreover, Adichie writes about the idea of shared responsibility among parents, which has already been explored by Adichie's literary predecessors.
If someone were to tell me that Adichie shared this letter four years ago on Facebook and it was likely that I wouldn't appreciate these "aged ideas", I would vehemently disagree. Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex back in 1949, writing volumes about what makes women different from men in a society. One of Beauvoir's famous quotes went something like this — the day when women discovery that they cannot pee while standing, they will realise that they are women and different from men. Another famous #feministquote was by Virginia Woolf — "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." These writers and thinkers have presented various vantage points from which a reader can explore the Woman Question. What Adichie does is sum up all these points instead.
In the end, the world would have been at ease if Feminism was called Menism instead.
While I was reading Dear Ijeawele, I was reminded of a brief conversation I had with my college senior about We Should All Be Feminists. After reading that book, she had said, "Well, there is nothing new about it." And this is exactly how I reacted to Dear Ijeawele. Indeed there is nothing new or different about this Feminist manifesto. In fact, most of the suggestions in Dear Ijeawele is obsessed with the idea of "gender roles". This very term recurs throughout the first 5-6 suggestions, rendering a monotony and dullness in the writing. Whether it is about gender biasness in colour-codes or toys, Dear Ijeawele seemed like a revision of what we already know about the patriarchal society we are in. Moreover, Adichie writes about the idea of shared responsibility among parents, which has already been explored by Adichie's literary predecessors.
If someone were to tell me that Adichie shared this letter four years ago on Facebook and it was likely that I wouldn't appreciate these "aged ideas", I would vehemently disagree. Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex back in 1949, writing volumes about what makes women different from men in a society. One of Beauvoir's famous quotes went something like this — the day when women discovery that they cannot pee while standing, they will realise that they are women and different from men. Another famous #feministquote was by Virginia Woolf — "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." These writers and thinkers have presented various vantage points from which a reader can explore the Woman Question. What Adichie does is sum up all these points instead.
In the end, the world would have been at ease if Feminism was called Menism instead.