First of all, the book’s full title is Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. It was originally published last year. Chimamanda wrote it in reply to a friend’s query. She had asked the author for advice on how to raise her daughter as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is a response letter to that.
Chimamanda goes hard in her suggestions, which range from encouraging the girl to have candid conversations about her clothes, sexuality and makeup, bashing the popular opinion of men ‘allowing’ women to have full careers, choosing toys that are largely considered ‘boyish’ instead of only dolls, busting the myth that women are engineered to always be in the kitchen, and many more.
Dear Ijeawele gives a no-holds-barred attack on sexual politics in the 21st century. It will no doubt spark much-needed discussions on what it really means to be a woman in this day and age. The author hopes that when the baby girl grows up, she will be “full of opinions, and that her opinions will come from an informed, humane and broad-minded place”.
Chimamanda is an accomplished author with a career spanning many years. Some of her most popular works include Americanah, Half of A Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus and We Should All Be Feminists. Her work has also appeared in many publications such as Granta and The New Yorker. She is a recent recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
