2019 ASR
Author and professor Gina Barreca visited Berkshire in September to share her experiences with feminism and its evolution in America.
The 2019 ASR We Should All Be Feminists is an essay by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Published in 2014 and adapted from the popular 2012 TEDx talk of the same name, this essay uses examples from Adichie’s personal life to define the term “feminist” and to argue how important it is, in our modern lives, that we all embrace ideals of gender equality.
The book was chosen as part of the celebration of 50 years of coeducation at Berkshire School, which began in 1969.
Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents. While the family's ancestral hometown is Abba in Anambra State, Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka, in the house formerly occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Chimamanda's father, who is now retired, worked at the University of Nigeria, located in Nsukka. He was Nigeria's first professor of statistics, and later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution.
To slur “feminism” into “humanism” is to usurp women’s voices once again, to make the singular feminine into the so-called universal masculine.” GINA BARRECA