I thought it would be nice to start the new year reading some books that light a fire within me during a time when I'd much rather hunker down and continue staying up late doomscrolling and eating holiday treats.
These books spelled out things that have been on my mind more than ever, and in a way that was so easy to understand - and to feel understood. I especially loved the author's take on Ms. over Mrs. - I will die on that hill. Good for you if you don't mind being called Mrs. once you're married, but I don't see why the Miss/Ms./Mrs. distinction even exists, considering there is only Mr. for men. There's no need to classify people by their marriage status when you refer to them. That's why I call everyone Ms., though I will write Mrs. if I know that's what they prefer.
I also loved the discussion on clothes and toys for babies. There's no reason to have clothes for baby boys and baby girls when they wear things for a month (if you're lucky) before growing out of them anyway. I remember taking my son to a store when he was just a few months old and he was wearing a gray onesie with white stars on it. A woman in front of me in the checkout line started talking about my cute little girl and seemed offended when I said he was a boy - are gray and stars feminine? And if they are, what does it matter?
Something I'd never really thought of was the author's idea that, "if we truly depended on biology as the root of social norms, then children would be identified as their mother's rather than their father's because when a child is born, the parent we are biologically certain of is the mother." With all the arguments about two heterosexual parent households and placing blame on single mothers for being *checks notes* single mothers, I loved this concept because it made me, as a single mother raising a son with a completely absent father, feel powerful (as I should, but as society tries to make me not feel).
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I previously read this in June 2016 and noted that it didn’t seem as revolutionary as I’d expected when there was such a buzz around it. However, re-reading it, I appreciate how matter-of-fact it is. It’s accessible so everyone can (and should) read it and understand it. As the author herself says, “My own definition if a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.” That’s something we need to strive for now more than ever.
Dear Ijeawele; or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This one resonated with me a bit more than We Should All Be Feminists, perhaps because of the parenting aspect and how conscious I am now of what my son is exposed to and what he thinks is acceptable. Honestly, a lot of the advice struck me in a way that I really needed after being raised in the South and held to certain standards I was led to believe were “right.”
Some of my favorite quotes include:
"Everybody will have an opinion about what you should do, but what matters is what you want for yourself, and not what others want you to want."
"But here is a sad truth: Our world is full of men and women who do not like powerful women. [...] We judge powerful women more harshly than we judge powerful men." Oof, that one hits hard considering *gesturing around*. (The whole quote is amazing but it's a paragraph so I don't want to replicate it all here.)
"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."
"Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people."
"Tell her that kindness matters. Praise her when she is kind to other people. But teach her that her kindness must never be taken for granted. Tell her that she, too, deserves the kindness of others."
