Today I want to write about who I aim to be. About who makes me feel so proud of being a woman. About my everyday heroes. About people who dedicate their lives to other people. About inspiring women who fight with the only strength of their words and ideas.
I want to report some tales of passion. The passionate lives of brave women who can rule the world.
To start with I want to introduce you Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian novelist, inspired by her country history and tragedies all but forgotten by recent generations of westerners. In one speech Chimamanda talks about “The danger of a single story”. By that she means that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
“If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa were from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner.”
Stories matter. Many stories matter. And not just a single story. Because the problem with single stories is that they are true but incomplete They just tell a part of the truth. The part that the power wants us to know. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
Go over miles. Check out what is behind a stereotype and do not stop at the superficial version that they will try to sell you.
Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story
The second life that I want to talk about is Shabana Basij-Rasikh, an Educator who helps girls and young women in Afghanistan get an education. Under the Taliban, she dressed as a boy to escort her older sister to a secret school_with dire consequences if they were caught. During college, she founded HELA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering Afghan women through education. She also raised funds through foundations and public talks across the US to build a high school for girls in her ancestral village, and to build wells on the outskirts of Kabul to give communities access to clean drinking water.
Shabana and her sister have been lucky, because their family encouraged them to study and to fight against the system. But, yes, nowadays there are still some places where girls are not allowed to get an education. Places where women still don’t have the same equality of men. Shabana is one of those women who said NO. Who wanted to learn and be independent and she is an example to follow for all of us.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh : Dare to educate Afghan girls
Then we have Hyeonseo Lee. She escaped from North Korea at 14, to begin a life in hiding, as a refugee in China. She needed to wait 14 years to see her family again. Her family who struggled to escape after she did. And Hyeonseo ‘s life hasn’t been easy at all. So young and alone in a country where people like her are considered invaders.
“We defectors have to start from scratch. Prejudice against North Koreans and icy stares were other obstacles that were hard to cope with.”
Her speech is really inspiring and I wish I could be that brave: My escape from Nort Korea
Another woman to admire is Kakenya Ntaiya, educator and activist, coming from the small village of Enoosaen, Kenya. Engaged at the age of 5, she was to participate in a female circumcision ceremony as a young teenager and then be married. But she had a different plan. First, she negotiated with her father and willingly agree to be circumcised_only if he would allow her to finish high school. Later, when she was accepted to Randolph Macon College in Viriginia, she negotiated with her village elders to do what no girl had ever done before: leave her village to go to college in the United States. Deeply proud of her heritage and of her community, Ntaiya returned to the village after school and worked with her elders to establish a school for girls there.
The story of a girl who refused to accept the continued oppression of women in her village. The story of a girl who demanded school: Kakenya’s story
At last but not least, here she is. One of my favorite writers and novelists: Isabel Allende. She writes stories of passion. Her novels and memoirs, tell the stories of women and men who live with passionate commitment_to love, to their world, to an ideal. Who better than she can talk about those stories. She was born into a Chilean family with political ties and went into exile in the United States in the 1970s. I simply love her because she is one of those who believes badly that we need feminine energy in the management of the world. In one recent speech she says:
“Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country.”
Yes Isabel, I do think so as well. I think that we have done a lot to be in this position today but that women need more space_more power. We need more women as decision makers because of our kindness and strength.
As she said once “Heart is what drives us and determines our fate”.
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