Because I am female, Iām expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieOf course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieAll over the world, girls are raised to be make themselves likeable, to twist themselves into shapes that suit other people. Please do not twist yourself into shapes to please. Don't do it. If someone likes that version of you, that version of you that is false and holds back, then they actually just like that twisted shape, and not you. And the world is such a gloriously multifaceted, diverse place that there are people in the world who will like you, the real you, as you are.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRacism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieThere were people thrice her size on the Trenton platform and she looked admiringly at one of them, a woman in a very short skirt. She thought nothing of slender legs shown off in miniskirts--it was safe and easy, after all, to display legs of which the world approved--but the fat woman's act was about the quiet conviction that one shared only with oneself, a sense of rightness that others failed to see.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie