Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

By far the most frequent means the author uses to justify her arguments is by relating personal anecdotes. These anecdotes either touch on events from her own life or they relate the experiences of her friends and people she has met.

Sometimes, the anecdotes are very personal: “I stopped playing football when my breasts first appeared because all I wanted to do was hide the existence of my breasts” (42). Other times, the anecdotes reminisce about some humorous event in the past: “Do you remember how we laughed and laughed about an atrociously written piece about me some years ago?” (23).

This is indicative of the fact that this work was originally written as a personal letter to a friend. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that many of the people involved in the anecdotes are people known to the recipient, Ijeawele. The stories are not just meant to inform, but also to make Ijeawele laugh, to bond with her over shared memories, to divulge personal secrets, and to ground the essay in the shared world of the two friends.

The overall effect is to give the essay a very light-hearted and intimate flavor. The personal anecdotes also help to make the more theoretical points understandable by relating them to very real, everyday scenarios.