Respond to Adichie’s Fifth and Sixth Suggestions by citing a significant quote from this section and explaining its significanc

FIFTH SUGGESTION

Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her to love

books. The best way is by casual example. If she sees you reading, she will understand that

reading is valuable. If she were not to go to school, and merely just read books, she would arguably become more knowledgeable than a conventionally educated child. Books will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become-a chef, a scientist, a singer, all benefit from the skills that reading brings. I do not mean schoolbooks. I mean books that have nothing to do with school, autobiographies and novels and histories. If all else fails, pay her to read. Reward her. I know this remarkable Nige- rian woman, Angela, a sin gle mother who was

raisin g h er child in the United States; her child

did not take to readi n g so she decided to pay

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her five cents per page. An expensive endeavor,

she later joked, but a worthy investment.

SIXTH SUGGESTION

Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions. But to teach her that, you will have to question your own language. A friend of mine says she will never call her daughter "princess." People mean well when they say this, but "princess" is loaded with assumptions, of a girl's delicacy, of the prince who will come to save her, etc. This friend prefers "angel" and "star."

So decide for yourself the things you will not say to your child. Because what you say to your child matters. It teaches her what she should value. You know that Igbo J'oke d . , use to tease girl s wh o are bein g· chilclish-"WI . . . 1at <1 1c yo u

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doing~ Don't you know you are old enough to find a husband?" I used to say that often. But now I choose not to. I say "You are old enough to find a job." Because I do not believe that marriage is something we should teach young girls to aspire to.

Try not to use words like "misogyny" and

"patriarchy" too often with Chizalum. We fem-

inists can sometimes be too jargony, and jargon

can sometimes feel too abstract. Don't just label something misogynistic; tell her why it is, and tell her what would make it not be.

Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women. For X please insert words like "anger,"

" " Id "ambition," "loudness," "stubbornness, co – ness" "ruthlessness."

;each her to ask questions like What are the things that women cannot do because they a~e

h . . have cu ltu ral pres-women? Do these t mgs '

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tige? If so, why are only men allowed to do the things that have cultural prestige?

It is helpful, I think, to use everyday examples. Remember that television commercial we

watched in Lagos, where a man cooks and his wife claps for him? True progress is when she doesn't clap for him but just reacts to the food itself-she can either praise the food or not praise the food, just as he can praise hers or not praise hers, but what is sexist is that she is prais- ing the fact that he has undertaken the act of cooking, praise that implies that cooking is an

inherently female act. Remember the mechanic in Lagos who was

described as a "lady mechanic" in a newspaper profile? Teach Chizalum that the woman is a mechanic, not a "lady mechanic."

Point out to her how wrong it is that a man who hits your car in Lagos traffic gets out and tells you to go and bring your husband because he "can't deal with a woman."

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Instead of merely telling her, show her with

examples that misogyny can be overt and misog-

yny can be subtle and that both are abhorrent. Teach her to question men who can have em-

pathy for women only if they see them as rela- tional rather than as individual equal humans.

Men who, when discussing rape, will always say something like "if it were my daughter or wife or sister." Yet such men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy. Teach her, too, toques- tion the idea of women as a special species. I once heard an American politician, in his bid to show his support for women, speak of how women should be "revered" and "championed"-a sen- timent that is all too common.

Tell Chizalum that women actually don't d b hampl. oned and revered; they just nee to e c .

al human beings. need to be treated as equ . d of . . undertone to the 1 ea

There is a patromzmg . d" and "re – . to b e "champ1one women needmg

vered" because they are women. It makes me think of chivalry, and the premise of chivalry is female weakness.

SEVENTH SUGGESTION

Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy,

but it is not an achievement. We condition girls to aspire to marriage and

we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relation ship is automatically uneven because th e in stitu tion m atters 1nore to one than the

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