Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Because gender can be uncomfortable, there are easy ways to close this conversation. Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes - that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that human behavior and social interactions cannot be reduced to animalistic comparisons.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues against simplifying complex human gender interactions by referencing animal behavior, particularly apes. She highlights that while some people use evolutionary biology to justify their views on gender roles, such comparisons are flawed because humans possess the ability to think and act beyond basic animal instincts. By pointing out our differences from apes, she invites a deeper understanding and discussion about gender that transcends simplistic analogies.
Themes
GenderHuman BehaviorEvolutionSimplicityIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
During a panel discussion on gender equality in the workplace, this quote can highlight the importance of understanding human complexities beyond animal behavior.
More from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
All quotes →The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
You can't write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction is.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
Similar quotes
No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.
Edward Mckendree BoundsRead
A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.
Immanuel KantRead
The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.
Fyodor DostoevskyRead
Being an Indian means living with the land. And the only way we'll be able to do that is to gain our freedom.
Russell MeansRead
The covenant of your servanthood is that you be a servant to God, not to someone else, and that you know that everything except God is a servant to God, as He Most High has said, "There is none in the heaven and the earth but cometh unto the Compassionate as a servant."
Ibn Ata AllahRead
Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time.
Victor HugoRead