What does “feminism” mean today?
In We Should All Be Feminists, this personal, eloquently argued essay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now – an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.
Enjoy this empowering extract today.
Today marks the publication day of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists on Audible, read by the woman herself.
‘I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
Here at 4th Estate we’ve been celebrating International Women’s Day, which comes as no surprise considering the wonderful array of female writers we publish. And so, to mark this momentous occasion, we wanted to share insightful snippets of what it’s like to be a woman by a selection of these revered writers – from being a feminist, and telling our stories, to gender bias in the way we eat, tropes in films, and the stereotypes attached to beauty. Read more…
A very happy New Year to you and all you know, from 4th Estate. 2014 was a fantastic year for books, wasn’t it? Or, to borrow the phrase from Andy Miller, it truly was The Year of Reading Dangerously. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie taught us that We Should All be Feminists, while Lena Dunham told us how she came to be one in Not That Kind of Girl. David Cronenberg put us off our dinner with the fantastic techno-thriller Consumed, but Anna Jones set us back on track with her astonishing debut recipe book A Modern Way to Eat. The phenomenal Sali Hughes taught us all we needed to know about beauty (and all we didn’t know we should) in Pretty Honest: The Straight-Talking Beauty Companion, a guide we should all start referring to daily in the new year. Read more…
Today sees the release of We Should All Be Feminists, the captivating, forthright and truly inspirational essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, based on her 2013 TEDx Talk of the same name.
‘…an academic, a Nigerian woman, told me that feminism was not our culture, that feminism was un-African, and I was only calling myself a feminist because I had been influenced by Western books. (Which amused me, because much of my early reading was decidedly unfeminist: I must have read every single Mills & Boon romance published before I was sixteen. And each time I try to read those books called ‘classic feminist texts’, I get bored, and I struggle to finish them.) Read more…
