My Feminist Manifesto collage

One of my favorite creative expressions is to collage. I’ve loved collaging since I was young and would make them to decorate binders, notebooks and my room. There is something very therapeutic about cutting up images and find new ways to put them all together to create a powerful, new image. I’ve been meaning to create a collage to represent the amazing recent work by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. When I read this book (I couldn’t put it down so I read it in one nonstop reading binge one afternoon), I knew immediately that these concepts were something I wanted to find a way to creatively capture and have readily available in my home to refer back too.

Chimamanda is a brilliant writer for so many reasons and her recent feminist books utilize a powerful mechanism to inspire and create change-  simplistic, beautifully crafted expressions that capture the essence and truth about a very important matter that affects us all. I read this book and it blew me away, not because what she was writing were concepts that I hadn’t thought about deeply myself but because she frames them in a letter to her friend about how to raise her daughter to be a feminist. It is entirely comprised of a loving way to ensure that our next generation learns what it means to be a member of society by questioning social norms and not accepting the status quo when it comes to gender norms. I have a son so each of the fifteen suggestions discussed in this book I plan to incorporate into the way I raise him as well.

I wanted to share this collage as a way to express my dedication to Ngozi Adichie’s Feminist Manifesto and as my dedication to this cause as woman, a wife, a parent and a human being.  I encourage you to read this book, reflect on your own beliefs and behaviors and find a way to express your own dedication to your beliefs. Feminists often get a bad rep or stereotyped based on how the movement has evolved over time but I love that there are so many creative ways- like writing, collaging, creating dialogue, reflecting, protesting, etc. that help to demonstrated that being a feminist isn’t a one size fits all movement anymore and that we are pushing the envelope in imaginative new ways.

Please share with me the way you express yourself and/or how you acknowledge your beliefs in a creative form.