Summary

The author prefaces her letter to Ijeawele with a section entitled “Introduction.” In the Introduction, the author contextualizes the letter that follows, explaining to her readers that a couple of years before this book’s publication, a close friend named Ijeawele asked her for advice on “how to raise her baby girl a feminist” (3). Although the author recalls that Ijeawele’s request felt “too huge a task” (3), she resolved to write her friend a letter, which she hoped would be both “honest” (4) and “practical” (4) in imparting her advice. The author calls the resulting letter a “map” (4) for her “own feminist thinking” (4), which here she turned into the book readers see before them.

The author, who is now the mother of a baby girl too, recognizes that the reality of raising a child is “enormously complex” (4). However, she concludes that, “it is...