Respond to Adichie’s Fifth and Sixth Suggestions by citing a significant quote from this section and explaining its significance. Responses should be 4 to 6 sentences in length.
FIFTH SUGGESTION
Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her to love
books. The best way is by casual example. If
she sees you reading, she will understand that
reading is valuable. If she were not to go to
school, and merely just read books, she would
arguably become more knowledgeable than a
conventionally educated child. Books will help
her understand and question the world, help her
express herself, and help her in whatever she
wants to become-a chef, a scientist, a singer, all
benefit from the skills that reading brings. I do
not mean schoolbooks. I mean books that have
nothing to do with school, autobiographies and
novels and histories. If all else fails, pay her to
read. Reward her. I know this remarkable Nige-
rian woman, Angela, a sin gle mother who was
raisin g h er child in the United States; her child
did not take to readi n g so she decided to pay
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her five cents per page. An expensive endeavor,
she later joked, but a worthy investment.
SIXTH SUGGESTION
Teach her to question language. Language is
the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs,
our assumptions. But to teach her that, you will
have to question your own language. A friend
of mine says she will never call her daughter
“princess.” People mean well when they say
this, but “princess” is loaded with assumptions,
of a girl’s delicacy, of the prince who will come
to save her, etc. This friend prefers “angel” and
“star.”
So decide for yourself the things you will not
say to your child. Because what you say to your
child matters. It teaches her what she should
value. You know that Igbo J’oke d . , use to tease
girl s wh o are bein g· chilclish-“WI . . . 1at <1 1c yo u
1. 6
doing~ Don’t you know you are old enough to
find a husband?” I used to say that often. But
now I choose not to. I say “You are old enough
to find a job.” Because I do not believe that
marriage is something we should teach young
girls to aspire to.
Try not to use words like “misogyny” and
“patriarchy” too often with Chizalum. We fem-
inists can sometimes be too jargony, and jargon
can sometimes feel too abstract. Don’t just label
something misogynistic; tell her why it is, and
tell her what would make it not be.
Teach her that if you criticize X in women
but do not criticize X in men, then you do not
have a problem with X, you have a problem with
women. For X please insert words like “anger,”
” ” Id “ambition,” “loudness,” “stubbornness, co –
ness” “ruthlessness.”
;each her to ask questions like What are the
things that women cannot do because they a~e
h . . have cu ltu ral pres-women? Do these t mgs ‘
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tige? If so, why are only men allowed to do the
things that have cultural prestige?
It is helpful, I think, to use everyday examples.
Remember that television commercial we
watched in Lagos, where a man cooks and his
wife claps for him? True progress is when she
doesn’t clap for him but just reacts to the food
itself-she can either praise the food or not
praise the food, just as he can praise hers or not
praise hers, but what is sexist is that she is prais-
ing the fact that he has undertaken the act of
cooking, praise that implies that cooking is an
inherently female act.
Remember the mechanic in Lagos who was
described as a “lady mechanic” in a newspaper
profile? Teach Chizalum that the woman is a
mechanic, not a “lady mechanic.”
Point out to her how wrong it is that a man
who hits your car in Lagos traffic gets out and
tells you to go and bring your husband because
he “can’t deal with a woman.”
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Instead of merely telling her, show her with
examples that misogyny can be overt and misog-
yny can be subtle and that both are abhorrent.
Teach her to question men who can have em-
pathy for women only if they see them as rela-
tional rather than as individual equal humans.
Men who, when discussing rape, will always say
something like “if it were my daughter or wife
or sister.” Yet such men do not need to imagine
a male victim of crime as a brother or son in
order to feel empathy. Teach her, too, toques-
tion the idea of women as a special species. I once
heard an American politician, in his bid to show
his support for women, speak of how women
should be “revered” and “championed”-a sen-
timent that is all too common.
Tell Chizalum that women actually don’t
d b hampl. oned and revered; they just nee to e c .
al human beings. need to be treated as equ . d of
. . undertone to the 1 ea
There is a patromzmg . d” and “re –
. to b e “champ1one women needmg
vered” because they are women. It makes me
think of chivalry, and the premise of chivalry is
female weakness.
SEVENTH SUGGESTION
Never speak of marriage as an achievement.
Find ways to make clear to her that marriage
is not an achievement, nor is it what she should
aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy,
but it is not an achievement.
We condition girls to aspire to marriage and
we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage,
and so there is already a terrible imbalance at
the start. The girls will grow up to be women
preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow
up to be men who are not preoccupied with
marriage. The women marry those men. The
relation ship is automatically uneven because
th e in stitu tion m atters 1nore to one than the
JO
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