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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Books

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Americanah

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Notes on Grief

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Purple Hibiscus

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Dream Count

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Medio sol amarillo

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Zikora

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Related Quotes

“Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive. It is misogynistic to suggest that they are. Sadly, women have learned to be ashamed and apologetic about pursuits that are seen as traditionally female, such as fashion and makeup. But our society does not expect men to feel ashamed of pursuits considered generally male - sports cars, certain professional sports. In the same way, men's grooming is never suspect in the way women's grooming is - a well-dressed man does not worry that, because he is dressed well, certain assumptions might be made about his intelligence, his ability, or his seriousness. A woman, on the other hand, is always aware of how a bright lipstick or a carefully-put-together outfit might very well make others assume her to be frivolous.”

WomenFeminismFashionMakeupMisogynyFemininity
Book:Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
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“and yet there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, a bleakness and borderlessness. It brought with it amorphous longings, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness. She scoured Nigerian websites, Nigerian pro files on Facebook, Nigerian blogs, and each click brought yet another story of a young person who had recently moved back home, clothed in American or British degrees, to start an investment company, a music production business, a fashion label, a magazine, a fast-food franchise She looked at photographs of these men and women and felt the dull ache of loss, as though they had prised open her hand and taken some thing of hers. They were living her life.”

HomeRaceTravelRacismImmigrationHomesicknessHomesickEmigration
Book:Americanah
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“Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall Apart? Ifemulu asked, wishing she had not told Ranyinudo about Dike. She was angrier with Ranyinudo than she had ever been, yet she knew that Ranyinudo meant well, and had said what many other Nigerians would say, which was why she had not told anyone else about Dike's suicide attempt since she came back.”

HomeCulturePerceptionImmigrationAchebe
Book:Americanah
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“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language. Why are my sides so sore and achy? It’s from crying, I’m told. I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but itsphysicality is: my tongue unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart - my actual physical heart, nothing figurative here - is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhytms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength. Flesh, muscles, organs are all compromised. No physical position is comfortable. For weeks, my stomach is in turmoil, tense and tight with foreboding, the ever-present certainty that somebody else will die, that more will be lost. One morning, Okey calls me a little earlier than usual and I think, Just tell me, tell me immediately, who has died now. Is it Mummy?”

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Book:Notes on Grief
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“I did not know that we cry with our muscles. The pain is not surprising, but its physicality is: my tongue unbearably bitter, as though I ate a loathed meal and forgot to clean my teeth; on my chest, a heavy, awful weight; and inside my body, a sensation of eternal dissolving. My heart – my actual physical heart, nothing figurative here – is running away from me, has become its own separate thing, beating too fast, its rhythms at odds with mine. This is an affliction not merely of the spirit but of the body, of aches and lagging strength.”

PainLossGrief
Book:Notes on Grief
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“به تماشای بچه ها مشغول شد. آنها با بی حالی روی جمن به دنبال هم مبدوبدند، از تکه چوبی به عنوان تفنگ استفاده میکردند و با دهانشان صدای گلوله در می آوردند و با دویدنشان توده ای از خاک به هوا میفرستادند. مشغول جنگ بازی بودند. چهار پسر. دیروز پنج نفر بودند.”

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Book:Half of a Yellow Sun
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“Mama is sad because Grandpa died,” my four-year-old daughter says to her cousin. “Died.” She knows the word “died.” She pulls tissues out of a box and hands them to me, and her emotional alertness moves, surprises, impresses me. A few days later, she asks, “When will Grandpa wake up again?” I weep and weep and wish that her understanding of the world were real. That grief was not about the utter impossibility of return.”

Grief
Book:Notes on Grief
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“But I cannot always run, and each time I am forced to squarely confront my grief – when I read the death certificate, when I draft a death announcement – I feel a shimmering panic. In such moments, I notice a curious physical reaction: my body begins to shake, fingers tap uncontrollably, one leg bobbing. I am unable to quiet myself until I look away. How do people walk around functioning in the world after losing a beloved father?”

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Book:Notes on Grief
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“It has happened, so just celebrate his life,’ an old friend wrote, and it incensed me. How facile to preach about the permanence of death, when it is, in fact, the very permanence of death that is the source of anguish. I wince now at the words I said in the past to grieving friends. ‘Find peace in your memories,’ I used to say. To have love snatched from you, especially unexpectedly, and then to be told to turn to memories. Rather than succour, my memories bring eloquent stabs of pain that say, ‘This is what you will never again have.”

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Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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“But remember that you might do all the things I suggest, and she will still turn out to be different from what you hoped, because sometimes life just does its thing. What matters is that you try. And always trust your instincts above all else, because you will be guided by your love for your child.”

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Book:Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
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“Many girls think of the 'feelings' of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.”

SocietyFeminismSelf ActualizationGender Norms
Book:Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions
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