We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What a fantastic little book! I mean that literally as this book is miniature and small enough to fit in your pocket. We Should All Be Feminists is a modified version of the TEDxEuston talk Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave in 2012. She talks about the first time someone called her a feminist and how bad the word sounded to her initially. As many of us remember, the word feminist used to carry so much negative baggage and she never understood why that was. She wasn’t angry, she didn’t hate men, and she being feminine, and so there was no way she could be labeled as a feminist, right?

She breaks down the differences between feminists and a believer in human rights and why it is important to distinguish between them, because the latter denies that the problem is inherently gender. (Not only that but how women were and sometimes still are expected to be: nice, sweet, pleasant, agreeable, beautiful, thin, etc.).

“The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.”

This book is full of funny anecdotes and wise lessons and you will immediately want to pass it along to everyone you know. After all it is only 40 pages, so there are no excuses not to read it.