#ThreeGoodThings

- I had dinner with a friend from graduate school whom I had not seen for a number of years. She asked what I was reading, so I showed her my copy of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah". It turns out she is reading it at the moment too! We're both enjoying it a lot.

- I was in a hurry so I stopped at Taco Cabana for lunch and ordered the steak taco combo. I was pleasantly surprised by both the tacos and the inclusion of chips and queso.

- I bought some Clawhammer peppermints partly because I wanted some mints and partly because I liked the design on the tin. I was pleased to see after my purchase that they are made in Canada. If you are in the USA, don't buy them from Amazon, because they are horribly overpriced there.

#ChimamandaNgoziAdichie #Americanah #TacoCabana #Tacos #FastFood #Food #Peppermints #Clawhammer

And some we leave hanging. We support feminist black writers.
We also recommend the book Americanah.
Award winning Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author and feminist from Nigeria.

Here is a strong piece The Danger of a single story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfzgtOuA-co&t=60s

#AdichieChimamandaNgozi #Feminism #americanah #boekenweek #blackwriters

I came to this interview with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie having only read one of her books (Americanah), but I think my reaction to that novel informed my reading of the interview, and the controversy over her thoughts on trans women, in an interesting way - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/15/cancel-culture-we-should-stop-it-end-of-story-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-on-backlash-writers-block-and-her-two-new-babies

Although a good book in many ways, for me Americanah had one glaring weakness: Adiche can't write men. When the couple at the centre of Americanah are separated, her in the US and he in the UK, her experience is richly imagined and written - his is thin and unconvincing. Contrast this with, say, Sally Rooney, who seems to be able to imagine her way into the minds of both men and women with equal facility.

So in a way Adiche's assumption that you can't really be a woman if you've been socialised as a man came as no surprise: it predicates a conclusion about being 'fully' female on the assumption that male-female categories are fundamental. It misses, at the simplest level, the fact that trans women are not treated as men in the same way that men are treated as men, because they are in fact women (inside) being treated as men. At a deeper level, it misses the real complexity of human experience, mistaking a conceptualisation for reality - precisely what other ways of seeing do, but which art shouldn't. At the level of real experience (the novel's true subject) nobody is ever socialised in the same way, because socialisation is always already different in different societies, families, times, etc...

So there is I think an interesting connection between the rigidity of Adiche's thinking on this and a key limitation of her writing.

(Before anyone asks, I haven't read Akwaeke Emezi, so can't comment...)

#bookstodon #ChimamandaNgoziAdichie #Americanah #SallyRooney #AkwaekeEmezi #trans

"She gloried in the off-beat dryness of Michelle Obama's humour, the confidence in her long-limbed carriage, and then she mourned when Michelle Obama was clamped, flattened, made to sound tepidly wholesome in interviews."

'#Americanah', by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Such a wonderful book.

I wonder how it was received in #Nigeria - @xeenarh ?

(Also, haven't finished it yet, don't spoil!)