A flawless case for feminism.

• Author: Burke, Julia
• Position: We Should All Be Feminists - Book review

We Should All Be Feminists By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Knopf Doubleday. $7.95.64 pages.

When actress Emma Watson spoke before the United Nations last fall introducing her "He for She" campaign for gender equality, she attributed the lack of feminist progress in the world to the negative connotations the word "feminist" has attracted.

Men have not been made to feel welcome by feminists, she explained; we have not adequately shown men how feminism can benefit them. "I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation," she told the audience of elder statesmen, to a round of applause.

Fawning headlines proclaiming "men need more feminists like Emma Watson" didn't sit right with me and many fellow feminists of the more ornery stripe, particularly those of us who have heard too many times that "feminists have to stop hating men."

All this is why Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is so downright inspiring. Beyonce is rightly credited for bringing the word "feminist" new cultural capital with the song "Flawless," but it wouldn't be such a powerful musical moment if the words being sampled weren't so elegantly simple:

"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much."

The lines are from Adichie's 2012 Ted Talk, which has since been expanded into the pocket-sized book of the same title, We Should All Be Feminists. It is the perfect size to keep for easy reference or to hand to anyone who seems unconvinced.

Adichie has that great gift of distilling concepts that could otherwise be too academic, too heady, into what feels like a line your wise older sister just uttered while fixing her hair.

Ifemelu, her character in the 2013 novel Americanah, is a young Nigerian immigrant to the United States who turns her musings on racial politics in America into a successful blog.

In one post, she sums up white Americans' unwillingness to talk about race: "Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don't even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion."

In Feminists, you get the sense Adichie is responding to a thousand ignorant commenters with her every disarming aside.

Recalling the first time she was called a feminist, Adichie describes her...