Letter to Chimamanda
I just finished reading your essay, “We Should All Be Feminists.” It was a quick read, just enough to fill my ride on the metro to and from work today. Having just gotten back to D.C. from a 2 week visit to Lagos, it was especially timely. I could still feel the dust of the harmattan on my skin as I flipped the pages of the booklet.
Your experiences in Nigeria struck me. This essay hit so many of my nerves, for so many reasons. See, I am American, through and through. My mother’s cousin married a Nigerian man from a large and prominent Nigerian family, and her children are all around my age. We are close and I visit Nigeria often. So often that I have a hard time explaining to Nigerians and Americans alike that I am not Nigerian at all, but the descendant of slaves from unknown places.
So, as you may imagine, the lense through which I view Nigeria is quite unique. Now, I have failed to mention that I am also a lawyer. I went to Harvard Law School. I got a masters at University College London before that. I also graduated from Spelman College, a HBCU for black women. I’m not sure that any of those experiences have been definitive in making me who I am. The kind of girl with what I like to call Mulan-complex. Sometimes, I long for masculinity and the freedom it provides. Or, at least, the freedom it would provide me to be more of who I am instead of tied into the body and expectations of a woman.
Not that I am gender nonconforming. Like you, I enjoy “girly” things like high heels, shopping, baking, and others (handbags are a particular passion). But I also am fiercely independent; my mother told me that I used to try to change my own diapers as a baby. I am domineering and assertive. I am not very empathetic, and I think that all criticism that rings true is healthy. According to the Myers-Briggs test, I am very much like Steve Jobs and not at all the shrinking violet that a woman who loves to bake and shop should be.
The thing that bothers me the most about being in Nigeria is the effect of gender roles and expectations. It’s absurdity. Women are expected to, and do!, obssess about shoes and bags and gossip magazines, and who is sleeping with whom, and their staff is stealing, while the men hoard the ambition and generate the ideas and the money that afford the lifestyle of luxury and idleness that the feminine side enjoys(?). When I get tired from long days at work, I tell myself, I should marry a Nigerian so I can move there and be idle. I do actually love the city of Lagos. I love the entrepreneurial spirit, the hustle, the food, the changing face of it, the edge. Then my stomach turns at the thought of such a vapid lifestyle as is prescribed to many of the women I know. And, also, my family and friends (gently) remind me that I am not the type of woman that a Nigerian man could handle…or would want. Must be because I am a bit of a feminist, like you.
Your essay immediately brought to mind a scene from my last visit. It wasn’t one that I had even reflected on as noteworthy until I digested your thoughts about waiters in Nigeria and their constant attempts to disappear you. A waiter tried to do that to me while I was on a night out with friends, but I almost didn’t even notice it, because I simply wouldn’t let him.
On a Friday night, I went with a group of girlfriends to a newish bar in Lagos. I had previously been at dinner with a male friend and some of his friends, and that group decided to come have drinks in the same bar. As I floated back and forth between my two groups, seated next to one another, I decided to order tequilla shots with the male friend. When we ordered the shots, I asked the waiter to bring lime and salt. He returned with the shots and the lime, but no salt. I asked him where the salt was and he said he had forgotten and would go get it. He left, and I floated to my other group of friends as I waited for him to come back. While I was at the next table, another man joined my dinner group of friends. Color me surprised when the waiter returned, still without any salt, but ready and waiting to take this man’s order. I immediately walked back and stood between him and this new male guest (whom I did not know). I asked, “where is the salt you were supposed to bring me?” The waiter looked at me confusedly and only managed to say, “uh, madame.”
“Why are you back here and taking his order without bringing me my salt. Go right now and get the salt directly and don’t come back without it.” The waiter did an about-face and left, and the male guest looked at me, shocked. “Sorry, but he was meant to be bringing me something that I asked for a while ago. He’ll be back to take your order,” I reassured him.
Immediatly afterwards, my male friend quietly told me, “Khadijah, you know you are not getting that salt tonight.” I just looked at him and smiled.
Less than 2 minutes later, the waiter was back with my salt. And then he went to take the new guest’s order. I smiled again at my friend and I said, “I get what I want.”
And it’s not just because I ask. But, because I demand. Maybe I will never marry a Nigerian (or any) man because I demand. But I won’t stop demanding. None of us should ever stop demanding. We should all be feminists, and we should demand the “social, political and economic equality of the sexes,” even when it means simply demanding that the waiter greet the man and you, or that the waiter bring my salt before taking his order.
