Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

By: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Narrated by: January Lavoy

From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today – written as a letter to a friend.

I have some suggestions for how to raise Chizalum. 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.

In We Should All be Feminists, her eloquently argued and much admired essay of 2014, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie proposed that if we want a fairer world we need to raise our sons and daughters differently. Here, in this remarkable new book, Adichie replies by letter to a friend’s request for help on how to bring up her newborn baby girl as a feminist. With its fifteen pieces of practical advice it goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century.

©2017 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

‘Take note world. When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells you to listen, you listen’ Stylist

‘Dear Ijeawele reminds us that, in the history of feminist writing, it is often the personal and epistolary voice that carries the political story most powerfully – For me, the most powerful sentence in the book is its simplest, and comes in only the third paragraph. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie urges Ijeawele to remember to transmit to her daughter “the solid unbending belief that you start off with . . . Your feminist premise should be: I matter. I matter equally. Not ‘if only’. Not ‘as long as’. I matter equally. Full stop.”..there is no doubt that if we raised all of our daughters to believe completely that they “matter equally”, to trust what they feel and think and to worry less about how they look and come across, we would soon find new ways to challenge the multiple injustices and indignities that still limit, and even wreck, so many women’s lives.’ New Statesman

Given me plenty to think about

An ambitious list, even for those not raising a baby girl to be a feminist. I am a twenty six year old woman and even I have questions about whether I’m feminist enough or the right kind of feminist or worry that these are the wrong type of questions to be had in the first place. The suggestions in the book have made me question some of my existing patterns of thought and brought up more than a few things that I now look at with a different perspective.

Exceptional

This book should be read by every person, of every age. It literally challenges ideals that you probably weren't even aware you had!

Good read.

I did enjoy every part of the short book, I must say a lot was revealed in this book that got my attention.

This book is incredible!

I am going to have a daughter soon, so I bought this amazing book. I think once in a while I will have to listen to it again, just to memorize all the incredible suggestions the author gives!

Lovely book and a must read for both women and men

This book has been a fantastic read and a first step into broadening my horizons not as a woman but as a human being.

Often feminism has been marketed as a women-only movement, as something that benefits women while lessening men. I never agreed with that so I ended up thinking feminism was not for me.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gives us a peak into a way of thinking that is much more modern and more into the idea of equality of all. I grew up in a small city in the centre of Italy and I was shocked finding out how much this book speaks to me about my upbringing.

I will definitely recommend the book and probably buy some copies for my friends and family for Christmas.

January Lavoy did a fantastic job reading the book.

wonderful

The suggestions here are present and valid for our society, girls need to be taught this to see a better future for everybody.

A letter I will always treasure

A letter i would gladly share with my daughter. Just wish that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie herself read the audiobook. I am sure if she did it would carry the weight it deserves.