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from REVIEWS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2020
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a bold feminist who is not afraid to express her opinions and position on the issues of feminism. Her passion for the liberation of women is evident in her novels: Purple Hibiscus and Americanah. In the latter, she incorporates some of the ideas that she develops in Dear Ijeawele. One such idea is the creation of a female character (Ifemelu) who subverts the notion that it is male prerogative to initiate physical intimacy in a heterosexual relationship:
Aren't we going to kiss? She asked.
He seemed startled. Where did that come from?
I'm just asking. We've been sitting here for so long.
I don't want you to think that is all I want.
What about what I want?
What do you want? (62)
Though the young man at first is shocked at her boldness, he accepts her proposal and they kiss for the first time. A traditional man would see Ifemelu as morally lax, and may not want to continue the relationship with her. Adichie here is saying that women also are human beings with flesh and blood and feel the same things that men feel, so that it should not matter who initiates the move for the expression of physical love. This is a significant paradigm shift in gender matters.
It is still in her bid to create more awareness for gender equality that she wrote Dear Ijeawele which one can see as a sequel to her famous speech entitled: ‘We should all be Feminists’. Indeed, it is a sequel to the foregoing because it reinforces the basic ideas about gender inequality especially as women in Nigeria experience it. Her text therefore develops and discusses in details many of the points made in that speech. This sequel is a continuation of her famous speech because she believes that, though ‘we have evolved … our ideas about gender had not evolved’ (We Should All Be Feminists).
Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's response to some of the critical gender issues in Igbo (Nigerian) culture that the literary feminist movement in Nigeria has not been able to fully address.
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