Osuagwu Ngozi Quotes

Isn't it odd that in most societies in the world today, women generally cannot propose marriage? Marriage is such a major step in your life, and yet you cannot take charge of it; it depends on a man asking you. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There was something in him, lighter than ego but darker than insecurity, that needed constant buffing, polishing, waxing. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be "nice" to people who do them harm. 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. So ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I will advise you to wait until you are at least in the university, wait until you own yourself a little more. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Ifemelu said. She did not know what "own yourself a little more" meant. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Readers like SapphicDerrida, who reeled off statistics and used words like "reify" in their comments, made Ifemelu nervous, eager to be fresh and to impress, so that she began, over time, to feel like a vulture hacking into the carcasses of people's stories for something she could use. Sometimes making fragile links to race. Sometimes not believing herself. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Let her know that there are many individuals and many cultures that do not find the narrow mainstream definition of beauty attractive. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Her friend is having a party, this Russian girl, they became friends because they have the same violin tutor. The first time I met the girl's mother, I think she was wearing something illegal, like the fur of an extinct animal, and she was trying to pretend that she did not have a Russian accent, being more British than the British! ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ojiugo often asked, 'But are they treating you well? Are they treating you well?' as though the treatment was what mattered, rather than the blighted reality of it all, that he was in a holding center, about to be deported. Nobody behaved normally. They were all under the spell of his misfortune. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal. Tell ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Take cooking, for example. Today, women in general are more likely to do housework than men - cooking and cleaning. But why is that? Is it because women are born with a cooking gene or because over years they have been socialized to see cooking as their role? ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Afterwards they would return to America to fight on the Internet over their mythologies of home, because home was now a blurred place between here and there, and at least online they could ignore the awareness of how inconsequential they had become. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I've always been curious about how much of our cultural baggage we bring to what and how we read. I suspect we bring a lot, although we like to think we don't. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

They looked at the world with an impractical, luminous earnestness that moved her, but never convinced her. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

They had both wanted it to happen and they both wished it had not; what mattered now was that nobody else should ever know. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Michael's a good cat but he tries so hard to keep it real that he can seem full of negativity, ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Recently a young woman was gang-raped in a university in Nigeria, and the response of many young Nigerians, both male and female, was something like this: 'Yes, rape is wrong, but what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?'
Let us, if we can, forget the horrible inhumanity of that response. These Nigerians have been raised to think of woman as inherently guilty. And they have been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings with no self-control is somehow acceptable. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

So teach Chizalum that biology is an interesting and fascinating subject, but she should never accept it as justification for any social norm. Because social norms are created by human beings, and there is no social norm that cannot be changed. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

He thought the police would have to do better; everyone knew the cult boys had more modern guns ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ifemelu sensed that the magazine was a hobby for Aunty Onenu, a hobby that meant something, but still a hobby. Not a passion. Not something that consumed her. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

And I was worried that if I looked too feminine, I would not be taken seriously. I really wanted to wear my shiny lip gloss and my girly skirt, but I decided not to. I wore a very serious, very manly, and very ugly suit. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I find that women ... deal with immigration differently. And I'm interested in that. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

But Emenike resumed talking, gesturing, his movements fluid and sure, his manner still that of a person convinced they knew things that other people would never know. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it's a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black and fall in love with a white person, race doesn't matter when you're alone together because it's just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don't talk about it. We don't even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we're worried they will say we're overreacting, or we're being too sensitive. And we don't want them to say, Look how far we've come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we're thinking when they say that? We're thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don't say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn't matter because that's what we're supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recalls that the stories she wrote as a seven year old in Nigeria were based on the kinds of stories she read, featuring characters who were white and blue eyed, they played in the snow, the ate apples. According to Adichie, this wasn´t just about experimentation or an active imagination, because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.
We learn so many things from reading stories, including the conventions of stories such as good versus evil, confronting our fears and that danger often lurks in the woods. The problem is that, when one of these conventions is that children in stories are white, english and middle class, than you may come to learn that your own life does not qualify as subject material.
Adichie describes this as "The danger of a single story" a danger that extends to stories which, whilst appearing to be diverse, rely on stereotypes and thus limit the imagination ~ Darren Chetty

I want to hold his hand, but I know he will shake it free. His eyes are too full of guilt to really see me, to see his reflection in my eyes, the reflection of my hero, the brother who tried always to protect me the best he could. He will never think that he did enough, and he will never understand that I do not think he should have done more. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

He was now a husband and father, and they had not been in touch in years, yet she could not pretend that he was not a part of her homesickness, or that she did not often think of him, sifting through their past, looking for portents of what she could not name. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

When Ifemelu met Obinze, she told Aunty Uju that she had met the love of her life, and Aunty Uju told her to let him kiss and touch but not to let him put it inside ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

She was a literal person who did not read, she was content rather than curious about the world. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Something about the way Chinedu said his name, Abidemi, made her think of gently pressing on a sore muscle, the kind of self-inflicted ache that is satisfying. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

That a woman claims not to be feminist does not diminish the necessity of feminism. If anything, it makes us see the extent of the problem, the successful reach of patriarchy. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This was love, to be eager for tomorrow. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

There must be more than male benevolence as the basis for a woman's well-being. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie