We Should All Be Feminists

A personal and powerful essay from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of ‘Americanah’ and ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, based on her 2013 TEDx Talk of the same name.

What does “feminism” mean today? That is the question at the heart of We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently-argued essay – adapted from her much-viewed Tedx talk of the same name – by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of ‘Americanah’ and ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’. With humour and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century – one rooted in inclusion and awareness. She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination, but also the more insidious, institutional behaviours that marginalise women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics. Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences – in the U.S., in her native Nigeria – offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful for women and men, alike. Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Adichie a best-selling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today – and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into thirty languages and has appeared in numerous publications. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book, and a People and Black Issues Book Review Best Book of the Year; and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck, which was published to critical acclaim in 2009. Her latest novel Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and being named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

Critical Praise

‘The book I'd press into the hands of girls and boys, as an inspiration for a future "world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves"’ Books of the Year, Independent

‘One and a half million YouTube viewings later, this small but perfectly formed talk has become an equally small but perfectly formed book, thanks to Fourth Estate. The perfect size in fact for handbags, pockets and Christmas stockings. There really is no excuse not to buy several’ Harpers Bazaar

Praise for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie:

‘A writer with a great deal to say’ The Times

'Here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.’ Chinua Achebe

‘Adiche [has] virtuosity, boundless empathy and searing social acuity’ Dave Eggers

‘Adichie is terrific on human interactions … Adichie’s writing always has an elegant shimmer to it … Wise, entertaining and unendingly perceptive’ Independent on Sunday

‘[Adichie] is recording the history of her country. She is fortunate – and we, her readers, are even luckier.' Edmund White —