This is one of those books where I just feel dumb leaving a review because how do I words? I don't know how to begin to do this book justice because I'm not half the writer Chimamanda is, and I can't even remember the half of what makes it brilliant.

It's a collection of short stories. Most of them take place either in Nigeria or the Philadelphia area (where I happen to live) and they each have their own theme, but each one feels like part of the same whole. All of these stories are a little heart breaking, but heart breaking in the best possible way. After the first few stories I was feelings a little weird about it for reasons I can't even explain, and I took a break and came back to it, and when I did I was just like...no, I love it.

In some (most? all?) of her stories she really gives you a sense of how stifling it can be to be a woman when the people around you expect you to act in a way that goes against your nature just because you're a girl, or because somebody else is a boy. She does the same with race and class sexual orientation. It's just guh! Yes!

And I've never used this word in my life, but it gets pretty meta in a few stories and I love it. One story is about a writer at a writing conference writing a story about sexual harassment while getting sexually harassed.

Spoiler

And the old white guy running the conference is like, "This doesn't feel true to life" and then the character is like "This shit happened! It's happening right now."

So...Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Read her shit. Do it.