Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah was one of my favorite reads last year, and her Purple Hibiscus will be right up there on this year’s list, too. I don’t know how it took so long for me to find her books (correction: yes, I do), but she has quickly become one of my favorite writers. Purple Hibiscus tells the story of the Achike family through the eyes of Kambili, a young girl. Papa rules the family with an iron grip, infantilizing and militarizing and terrorizing his […]
Americanah
I have probably mentioned previously that my sister-in-law rating something five stars on Goodreads means I automatically add it to my To Read queue 9/10 times. Such was the case with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. My new book club selected it for this month and so it got bumped to the top. And 477 pages later I am glad I did, though I struggle to think of what to say about it. Americanah is the story of two childhood sweethearts, Ifemelu and Obinze, and how […]
A useful little guide
This book arose from a letter to a friend. The friend had asked Adichie how to raise a feminist daughter and this book is Adichie’s answer. As books go it is fairly short, but I suppose that for a letter it is quite long. If you have read Adichie before (and if you haven’t you really should) her voice is strong and flowing in this letter and I enjoyed reading it. I wanted to buy ten copies and just throw them at anybody who’s expecting. […]
“I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness.”
Feminist is a dirty word but it doesn’t have to be. We Should All be Feminists should be required reading for middle school, the book is so short no one has a good reason not to read it. Seriously, it didn’t even take half my lunch break to read so I went through it twice. “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, […]
Americanah
I wasn’t sure what to expect from “Americanah.” I’ve heard many good things about Ms. Adichie’s work, but with the book being almost 600 pages I was afraid of committing to it. Am I glad I did. From the opening pages I was hooked into the characters and the plot. This book didn’t feel like I was reading it but rather that I was experiencing it. We begin with present Ifemelu as she prepares to return to Nigeria, her country of origin. She’s spent her […]
I am a man. I am uncomfortable. I now know why, and embarrassed it’s taken this long.
I’ve probably qualified enough of my reviews with this statement, at this point, to make my continued use of it superfluous, but old habits die hard: I am a white male. And though I think of myself as fairly progressive, I find myself disagreeing with liberals almost as much as I do conservatives. So, for whatever that’s worth, this is where I’m coming from. I’ve always had an uneasy association with feminism. The immediate consequence of this tends to fall somewhere in the vicinity of […]
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