Adichie in Context

 Nathan Galloway

I am writing this reading review moments after listening to 90 minutes of the first 2020 Presidential Debate. My takeaway is simple, the teachings of Adichie are needed as much now as they ever have been. Watching three grown men talk over one another for ninety minutes showed me that although Adichie’s suggestions are not radical per se, their implementation would have a radical impact on both macro-level and individual relationships in the United States and around the globe. 

The context of reading the second half of her letters in such close proximity to the debate made me focus heavily on her eighth suggestion. The beginning of this section reads:

Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people…We teach girls to be likable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same (Adichie, 36-37).

 

A big question of Adichie’s is “Can you reverse X and get the same result?” (Adichie, 6). Ask yourself, if either President Trump or Former Vice President Biden were women would we have gotten the same result? Would the hateful rhetoric spewed on the stage this September night be normalized in the same way as it is and has been these past four years? 

            Another key part of Adichie’s eighth suggestion is her focus on kindness. This kindness is what is missing in our current political discourse. Trump and Biden had no problems calling one another out when they felt slighted, but this attribute becomes a weakness when it is not coupled with kindness. 

            This radical kindness doesn’t have to remain radical. Adichie reminds her readers that “Social norms are created by human beings, and there is no social norm that cannot be changed” (Adichie, 51). How do we do this? Firstly, we educated our little ones in Adichie’s feminist model. Within structures of power, we need more women and men in power who are willing to fight for everyone’s right to become a “full person” (Adichie, 8).

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