Jineth still works as a journalist. She lives with her mother, under the protection of bodyguards. She receives near-constant threats of kidnapping and violence, wearing a bulletproof vest and traveling to work in an armored car. Despite everything, she refuses to be dissuaded. “The worst that can happen to me has already happened,” she has said. At a time when too many politicians and government officials around the world lash out at the press and punish individual journalists, I am in awe of her courage and her determination to tell the truth, no matter what.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Hillary
When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was nine years old, in school in Nigeria in the 1980s, her teacher made a proposition to the class: She would give them a test, and the student who got the highest score would be the class monitor. At this, Chimamanda’s ears perked up. Being class monitor meant getting to patrol the classroom, a long cane in hand, taking down the names of any troublemakers you noticed. She very much wanted the job.
Sure enough, she got the highest score on the test. But then, to her surprise, the teacher clarified that the monitor couldn’t be a girl—it had to be a boy. She had neglected to mention that earlier, because she assumed it was obvious. The boy who had earned the second-highest score was made class monitor, and the incident opened Chimamanda’s eyes to the way gender affects who gets ahead and who is held back. “Now, what was even more interesting about this,” she added later in a TED Talk, “is that the boy was a sweet gentle soul who had no interest in patrolling the class with the cane, while I was full of ambition to do so. But I was female, and he was male, and so he became the class monitor.”
From her childhood through the present day, Chimamanda has deliberately noticed and named insidious dynamics of racism and sexism. An early reader and writer, she loved British and American novels and copied their style in the pencil stories with crayon illustrations that she wrote for her mother. When she discovered African writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, her perception of the world shifted. “I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized.”
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
—CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka, a college town in Nigeria, raised by a college professor father and university registrar mother—the first woman to hold the job. Her parents hoped Chimamanda would become a doctor, and she spent a year studying medicine before admitting to herself and her family that what she really wanted to do was write. She would go on to earn a master’s in creative writing from Johns Hopkins, then study African history at Yale. Her first play, For Love of Biafra, was published in Nigeria in 1998. In her typically funny, frank style, she has shrugged it off as “an awfully melodramatic play.” She was twenty-six years old when she published her first book, Purple Hibiscus, a coming-of-age story. Three years later, she followed up with Half of a Yellow Sun, a historical novel based on the Biafran War in Nigeria. After that came a collection of short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, and the novel Americanah, about a Nigerian blogging on the topic of race in the U.S.
In 2008, Chimamanda won a MacArthur Fellowship. Five years later, she received a jaw-dropping recognition of a different kind when none other than Beyoncé, another gutsy woman, sampled her TED Talk, “We Should All Be Feminists,” in her song “Flawless.” Chimamanda’s book by the same title is filled with wry and wise observations about feminism.
“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man.’ ”
—CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
During the 2016 presidential election, Chimamanda was frustrated with the way many of my supporters, especially women, were silenced online and in the press—so she wrote an essay speaking up for those who could not do it for themselves. When I saw her in 2018, she had recently published Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, and was full of insights about the connection between free speech, democracy, and feminism. She also wanted to talk about my Twitter bio. “The first word that describes you is ‘wife,’ ” she pointed out. “And then I think it’s ‘mom’ and then it’s ‘grandmother.’ And when I saw that, I have to confess that I felt just a little bit upset. And then I went to look at your husband’s Twitter account, and the first word was not ‘husband.’ ” She was right. I promised her I would change it when I got home, and that’s what I did.
When I told Chelsea, she said, “Chimamanda’s right! And I love that she just came right out and told you what she thought—and what you needed to hear.”
In addition to her smart, deliberate voice—on the page and off—I admire another gift of Chimamanda’s. She has the rare ability to sum up even the biggest societal problem swiftly and incisively and, in the next breath, offer a solution. In her 2009 TED Talk, she illustrated what she called “the danger of a single story,” and immediately proposed a new approach to inform and shape the way we perceive others. I can’t wait to see how she continues to do just that.
America Ferrera
Chelsea
The first thing I noticed when I met America Ferrera was how warm, funny, and honest she is. We were in Nevada at a campaign event for my mom. It was 2008, six years after her powerful role in the independent film Real Women Have Curves, three years after The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and one year after she had won her first Emmy for starring in the TV show Ugly Betty. She told her story—the story of a first-generation American whose parents had moved to the United States from Honduras to give her opportunities that changed her life. She talked candidly about how hard it was at times being one of six kids to an immigrant mother and relying on free lunch at school to eat. She spoke about her certainty that she—as a woman of color, as the daughter of immigrants—needed to use her platform to help other people build a more just, more inclusive, and kinder world. The way she saw it, there was no better way to build that world than by participating in politics. We were on the road together a lot during that campaign, and before long, we had formed what I knew would be a lifelong friendship.
HILLARY
I also met America during that campaign as she traveled around the country for me. She’s always struck me as a well-named, vibrant example of our country.
America started acting when she was just seven years old. She starred in her school productions of Hamlet—what I wouldn’t give to go back in time and see that!—and Oliver! Her mother worried about America and tried as hard as she could to steer her daughter away from acting. But America knew where her passion and talents were. “My dream was to be an actress,” America said later. “And it’s true that I never saw anyone who looked like me in television or in films, and sure, my family and friends and teachers all constantly warned me that people like me didn’t make it in Hollywood. But I was an American. I had been taught to believe that anyone could achieve anything—regardless of the color of their skin, the fact that my parents immigrated from Honduras, the fact that I had no money. I didn’t need my dream to be easy, I just needed it to be possible.”
After high school, America enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she studied theater and international relations. Before long, she dropped out to focus on acting (though she would come back to finish her bachelor’s degree years later, in 2013, and I will never forget how proud she and her family were that day). In some ways, her mother was right to worry; America felt the racism and sexism of Hollywood constantly. Instead of conforming to someone else’s idea of who she should be, she carved out her own path. She took on roles she could be proud of, and
brought her whole, authentic self to every project.
That didn’t mean it was easy, though. America once described the experience of standing onstage at the Emmys for Ugly Betty: “I’d imagined being in this room, clutching this statue ever since watching my first Emmy broadcast at seven years old. Now I was actually at the podium and accepting the award on national television. It was 2007, and I was twenty-three.… This should have been a moment of sublime celebration. But it wasn’t. I can’t remember the words that came out of my mouth, but I do remember, clear as day, the words that ran through my mind: ‘Who do you think you are? You don’t belong here. No one here thinks you deserve this. Hurry up and get off the stage.’ ” It took nearly a decade of hard work and therapy for her to finally beat her “nagging internal critic.”
“I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams, in order to contribute my talents to the world, I have to resist the truth of who I am. I for one am ready to stop resisting and to start existing as my full and authentic self.… My identity is not my obstacle. My identity is my superpower. Because the truth is, I am what the world looks like.”
—AMERICA FERRERA
As America has worked to silence that critic, she has spoken openly about her struggles with self-doubt and how our politics has fed that doubt, leading her to question her place in her country. “Some of us don’t have the privilege of living our lives outside of politics,” she said later. “People make decisions every single day that impact my life—the air I breathe, my ability to walk down the street and be safe, how much money I make for the job I do, whether I can choose what happens to my body.”
Politics is personal; America understands that deeply and feels a responsibility to share her story and her platform to help enfranchise and protect people—particularly immigrants, people of color, and women. She’s partnered with Voto Latino and other organizations to expand civic engagement and participation, and campaigned for candidates she believes in. She refuses to apologize for her voice or her advocacy.
America is always looking toward the future, asking herself what she can do to help build the world she wants to live in while confronting injustices. After the 2016 election, she and her husband, filmmaker Ryan Williams, founded a group called Harness that works with other artists to encourage people to vote, and to tell untold and important stories. She also supports other activists, including our friend Elsa Collins who, since 2018, has led multiple bus trips to San Diego and Tijuana to bring desperately needed supplies to families on both sides of the border, including children separated from their parents.
In 2017, America courageously shared her story of being sexually assaulted at nine years old, and joined millions of women who were raising their hands to say “Me too.” She became a founding member of TIME’S UP, an organization that emerged from the ongoing and long-overdue global reckoning around the abuse and misbehavior of powerful men. America and others from the entertainment industry came together to talk about what they could do to create change for women everywhere. Today, TIME’S UP and the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund are supporting women fighting for justice from the entertainment industry to the restaurant industry to the technology sector.
In politics and in her own life, America is constantly pushing herself to do things that scare her. In 2016, she decided to do a triathlon. She shut out the negative voices in her head that told her she was “the fat kid, the procrastinator, the quitter,” and started training. “Sensing my own self-doubt, I doubled down, announcing my triathlon plan on every social media platform I have,” she wrote later. By the time she got in the water for her first ocean swim, she had developed a mantra: “You are a warrior, you are strong, and sharks are not real.” On the day of the race she achieved her two goals: Finish, and stay positive. True to form, as she passed other athletes she cheered them on, explaining that her only goal was to yell louder than the voices in their heads. When she finished, she said, “I finally got my answer to that question: Who do you think you are? I am whoever I say I am.” As an actress, as an advocate, as a writer, as an athlete, and as a mother, America has proved again and again that it’s a gutsy thing to own our own story.
Ali Stroker
Chelsea
When Ali Stroker accepted a Tony Award in 2019 for her performance as Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, she knew she was making history. No actor who uses a wheelchair had won the prestigious theater award before. “This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting to see themselves represented in this arena—you are,” she said in her acceptance speech. As a little girl growing up in Ridgewood, New Jersey, she’d known all too well how it felt to have to be her own role model. “I’m very aware that when I was a little girl, I wasn’t seeing anybody like me,” she said, “and on days when I’m exhausted or discouraged about something, that lights a fire.”
At age two, a car accident left Ali with a spinal cord injury, paralyzing her from the chest down. She has used a wheelchair ever since. From the very beginning, she says, her parents taught her to focus not on the things she couldn’t do, but on the things she could. And one thing she could do was sing.
Her first experience with musical theater came when she was seven years old and took part in a neighbor’s backyard performance of Annie. Ali played the starring role, and knew instantly that she belonged onstage. “It was a really special summer,” she said later. “I remember my life beginning.” She acted throughout high school, where she also served as class president, and later became the first actress in a wheelchair to earn a degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her motto was “Make your limitations your opportunities.”
“Who says that dance isn’t turning on wheels? Who says dancing isn’t throwing your arms in the air and grabbing someone else’s arms to be propelled across the stage?”
—ALI STROKER
In 2012, Ali captured national attention when she competed in The Glee Project, a reality television competition to earn a role in the musical comedy TV show Glee. Three years later, she made her Broadway debut in Deaf West Theatre’s revival of the musical Spring Awakening. The role gave her an opportunity to translate choreography, collaborating with the cast and crew to create a performance that was uniquely her own.
In addition to being a phenomenal performer, Ali is also a committed advocate. She traveled to South Africa to hold theater workshops and classes for women and children affected by HIV/AIDS, founded an anti-bullying campaign called Be More Heroic, and helped launch ATTENTIONTheatre to create more meaningful opportunities for performers with disabilities. “We will do so with no agenda to inspire, or to promote these artists as heroes among us,” reads the group’s mission statement. “We will represent all people as we all are: Human beings striving toward desire and identity.”
The night she won her history-making Tony, Ali entered from backstage rather than from the audience; there was no ramp to the front of the stage. Afterward, she pointed out that “Broadway theaters [are] all made accessible to patrons, but the backstage areas are not. So I would ask theater owners and producers to really look at how they can begin to make the backstage accessible so that performers with disabilities can get around.”
We still have a long way to go to make theater truly accessible—for audience members, production crews, creators, and performers alike. But through the power of her own example, her commitment to making space for others, and her willingness to ask hard and important questions, Ali is ensuring that aspiring performers with disabilities—maybe even a little girl in a wheelchair who dreams of starring in Annie or Oklahoma!—can see themselves represented and celebrated.
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
Chelsea
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh was nine years old and living in New Jersey on September 11, 2001. Her parents had moved to the United States from Jordan and Palestine because they wanted to surround Amani and her brothers
with opportunities to go as far as their dreams could take them. But after 9/11, Amani found herself scorched by racism and rampant Islamophobia, including in her own school and community.
At seventeen years old, she started an online magazine called MuslimGirl. “It was my personal refusal from having Muslim women’s voices be exploitatively collected, hijacked, and sidelined by media corporations that claim and twist our narrative,” she later wrote. “It began as a way for millennial Muslim girls to connect and communicate with each other, and evolved into a platform to defiantly carve out a space for ourselves in the middle of post-9/11 anti-Islam hatred, stereotypes, and misconceptions.” When she started MuslimGirl in 2009, nothing like it existed in the United States. She knew it was important for her and for other young Muslim American women, and she wanted to help amplify voices like hers. Each time she checked, the site had more views.
“People always ask me, ‘How did you start MuslimGirl?’… I bought a domain, got some hosting, and ‘started.’ But that was the easy part. The questions people should be asking me are, ‘How did you stick with MuslimGirl throughout college when all you wanted to do was go to concerts and chill with friends in the dorms?’ ‘What did you respond to your father when he suggested that maybe you should “start considering something serious” after you graduated?’… that’s where it gets a whole lot more difficult.”
The Book of Gutsy Women Page 30