Ijeoma Umebinyuo @ijeomaumebinyuo Twitter profile

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

2 years

Shout out to the man who saw me at a family member's party in Lagos and begged me to come back on twitter because he missed my brilliance and so did others. You were harsh but you had a point. Literally begged me and told all my cousins I am too exceptional to be hidden.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

This article reminds me of when Pfizer used children in Northern Nigeria to test their drugs which resulted in deaths and disabilities of children. This testing was unethical and they gave just $175,000 to four families of dead children in 2009. The testing happened in 1996.

The Guardian

@guardian

3 months

Nestlé adds sugar to infant milk sold in poorer countries, report finds

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

We soaked the body of our sister in a salt bath.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

“Nobody warned you that the women whose feet you cut from running would give birth to daughters with wings.” —Questions for Ada

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 month

“Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.” — Chinua Achebe.

Notorious DIRI 🇭🇹

@Mahottie

1 month

An insult so poetic I knew you had to be Nigerian

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

19 days

Nwanne m, I know you think the world is better without you, but I want you to know there were people who poured palm wine on the ground and praised your ancestors the day you were born. Don’t let the noise win.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

may the sun find you. may it sneak into your morning. may the beginning of a new journey bring you clarity, may confusion not direct your path. as you have tried and failed, may you also try and succeed. may you remember your name is both a prayer and a libation.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

The people who are fearless in their thirties are people who were fearless in their twenties. That muscle gets developed when you understand how to do difficult things, how to stand up for yourself, how to fail and try again, how to lose and win. That is how you win. Grit.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

7 months

I do not like when memes of children are used to discuss certain adult topics. I will stand on this as someone whose grad work focuses on tech + culture and as someone with an undergrad that studied communication theories and digital media.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

11 days

All I see are powerful Kenyan women. So, use the correct poem: "Nobody warned you the women whose feet you cut from running would give birth to daughters with wings." — Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

Your father is a thief. Your grandfather was a thief. Your great-grandfather was a thief. You are from a long legacy of thieves. That is your legacy as a "South African" living on stolen land. You are a thief.

Boer

@twatterbaas

5 months

I was born in Africa. So was my father, and his father, and his father, and his father….since 1670. I am a white farmer. Do I have the right to own farmland and call myself a South African or not?

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

19 days

You will begin again. It will be difficult, so many will leave you, you may have to crawl before you learn how to walk in your light. But, you will begin again. One evening, after you stand in the bathroom, you will make a vow to believe in yourself again. You will keep that vow.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 month

It takes years to remove the stigma of shame from your own spirit. Shame of struggle, shame of lack, shame of “finishing” late, shame of being misunderstood. Years. But it’s much easier when you have therapy and/or very great friends.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

Study yourself. That should be a critical part of being an adult. And don’t deceive yourself, let your truths set you free. Are you happy? Can you be happier? Are you on your path or someone else’s? What grounds you? Who are you not?

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

15 days

The minute I feel a man is unkind, I start pulling away. I do not care how intelligent, educated or well off you are because unkind men will drag you down. They will harm you in the future, especially with words. I never ever ever compromise on kindness. Ever.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

By Sandra Cisneros.

The Morally Corrupt Tay Resnick

@SweetTayPie0104

4 months

I hope all women get to experience the bliss of living alone at some point in their lives. Gonna be hard for me to come up off this lifestyle!

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

Rule 1: Unbow your head. Rule 2: Become so good at something, it’s impossible to speak on the topic without you. Rule 3: Build slow, but build. Rule 4: Never ever stop learning. Never become unteachable. Rule 5: Use skill + gift as a Trojan horse. Rule 6: Solitude.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

And you have to let yourself be as multifaceted as you wish to be. Wonder is a beautiful thing, tap into it.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

I will never get over how women around the world love my work. But when I see Black girls and women from various countries use my poems, my words, my quotes as their caption? I weep inside with joy. Like, that's right my love, tell the darkness you did not die.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

"You must let the pain visit. You must allow it teach you. You must not allow it overstay." "Healing comes in waves." "As if anger cannot be righteous." — Ijeoma Umebinyuo

Indigo ✨️

@ThirdEyeMastery

4 months

Nobody talks about the angry stage of healing. The rage you feel when you realize how much and how long you were taken advantage of. The absolute disgust you feel towards those people that mislead you. It comes in waves. Sometimes you'll feel healed and then it suddenly hits you.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

You cannot wake up every single day trying to prove your humanity to people. Your entire life cannot be built on proving your humanity to people every single day. Do you think your art, voice, gift, your entire existence was created for that? You will exhaust yourself.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

Some of you are very very powerful but your environment wants you to be small. They want to “put you in your place” and if you let them, if you let them, you will never discover the brilliance of your gift.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

One of the best things I ever learned while going through dark times is the significant amount of people that truly don’t care, but the small amount of people that will break down walls because you are trapped. Always remember the small amount of people.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

Be wicked. Don’t ever in your life remove your boundary, stack up your education and skill. Leave people who don’t like you, be fucking selfish. Use spite and anger to your advantage as fuel, not to internalize bullshit. Upgrade the fuck out of your life no matter how slowly.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

11 months

“Ada where did the depression take you?” Into the night. What triggered it? Memories. How did you come out of it? Love. Whose love? Mine” — a revised Questions for Ada

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

20 days

One of the things I do is visualize my future life so well, I carry myself into it. I will sit and bring forth a new life no matter how bad my current life may seem. I don't know how to explain it but it works for me.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

In Igbo cosmology, it is believed some people come into the world to never get married. This is the vow they made before coming to earth. They can become very very successful but if they do get married, if culture forces them to get married—they will be very unhappy.

And By The Way…

@kayelcee901

2 months

In a world that amplifies romantic relationships, this was so courageous and bold of Law Roach and I have a new found admiration for him

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

Love it. Same energy. Tuira, a woman from the indigenous Kayapó people from the same Brazil in 1989.

red.

@redstreamnet

2 months

Indigenous protesters smeared red urucum seed paste on the faces of business leaders who are pushing for the construction of a railway in the Amazon that will destroy the environment for numerous communities. At a public consultation event, these business leaders had come to

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

9 months

No matter how lonely it may seem, do your best to develop your talent, gift, skill and passion. No matter how lonely, do it on the side, do it during the weekends, do it once a month. It has a way of putting fire in your belly in a world that can be particularly bleak.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 month

There is a level of servitude in Nigerian culture that makes me uncomfortable. The kneeling, the bowing of the head, the “sir/madam” to folks who “appear” more wealthy, the humbling of selves, the meekness. There’s something fundamentally wrong with how various class interact.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

You laugh at small beginnings, I laugh at you never starting at all. You laugh at failing, I laugh at you never beginning again with more knowledge. You mask your fear with laughter. While you laugh at the phoenix burning, it rises from it’s ashes to soar and shine above you.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

More importantly, you should be hating with discipline, integrity and facts. Hating just to hate and feel cool is literally bullying. Be a principled hater, not a casual hater who insults people minding their business and living.

in charge of the girls

@AmeriKraut

2 months

kendrick makes me realize that i could and should be hating harder

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

The day will come when you will have to face your own life. You can run around the world, you can hide in the skin of lovers, you can even birth children to cover it all up. But, you will one day have to face your own life.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

You are allowed to be many things in this lifetime. To live many many lifetimes in this one cycle. To leave this world exhausting all your talent, gift and skill. To take back the pen and write your own story. You are allowed to reinvent yourself, to thrive.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

If you stay too long weeping for the life you almost had, you will miss out on the life you can build to be even more beautiful. You are not a tragedy, a sin, a stain, an unwanted child. You are yours for safekeeping. It is time to build what can be yours.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

When has silence ever saved women like you?

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

17 days

My cheat code in life? People have left me for dead and I have picked myself up, gone to war with myself and won myself back.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

Learn it quickly! QUICKLY! Especially if you are still in your twenties and you are a Black woman. If you ever put your joy and life aside for anyone, you will regret it.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

You are so important. You are so important. You are so so so important. What stories you bring, who you are, all that you have survived. You are so so so damn important, do not minimize who and what you are.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

maybe your life mission is to be the educated auntie who travels, loves, is loved, is well known, and her works are internationally recognized. the auntie who invests, leaves her estate for them, writes their names in her will, protects them. maybe life is fair to you this way.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

11 months

Don’t spend more than seven business days crying over any man. Your friendships can either make you or keep you broken for years, remember not to shrink for them. Do not mourn the living. Learn a skill, sharpen your talent, however don’t put pressure on yourself. Go to therapy.

BB🫶🏾

@1ov1bri

11 months

People age 26+.. what is some advice you would give someone age 20-25?

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

I also do not wait for people to believe in my vision and goals. You can call me a madwoman all you want, but when I tell you I am going to do something, it does not matter how slow I start. I will accomplish it and go beyond.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

“I hope whatever God you believe in protects you and if you do not believe in God, I hope the universe keeps kissing your feet.”

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

Daughters not taught to pour into themselves first before trying to help others may even lay down their life (their youth, their freedom, their voice, their chance at success) for others. They will think this is love.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

9 months

You don’t even know how courageous you have always been until you look back. Until someone recites your past obstacles like a scripture before you. Until you see a younger version of yourself and recognize the pain you once held in your eyes, in your bones. You brave child.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

I like it when people find Questions for Ada, read it from cover and cover, and start quoting it like it is their favorite spell, their charm, their testament of survival, their prayers to bring themselves back to life. What a beautiful gift I have given generations of women.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

The only thing I want to experience in this life right now is love. Don’t stress me. Don’t bother me.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

If you want to know an emerging artist that is using his deep knowledge of Igbo spirituality, you need to follow that eighteen year old Oja player, Chigozie Okeke. The flutist behind the “Ojapiano” sound. Whoever he was in his past life is truly showing off and showing out!

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

Michael Chièdoziém Chúkwúderà

@ChukwuderaEdozi

5 months

Female writers from West Africa, are lagging behind intellectually, compared to their counterparts from the South, West and even North. We need more female intellectuals from West Africa. We Need New Philosophers.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

7 months

Money and education will save you as a woman. Do not ever in your life think financial freedom is not an important aspect of your womanism, it is crucial.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

11 months

The honest truth I had to learn about life? Life can be unfair, unfair even to the kindest people. Unfair even to the most generous people. Unfair even to the most skilled, educated, talented people. Life can be so brutally unfair.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 month

Baby, I’ve got a quote ready.

Qondi

@QondiNtini

1 month

It gets worse!!!!!! The cover on the left is the ACTUAL COVER OF THE MAGAZINE The cover on the right is an “EXCLUSIVE DIGITAL COVER” Holy gawd yikes!!!

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

Stay. You are worthy of this joy.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

17 days

The first thing people try to do when they are afraid of your light is take away your confidence. If they can destroy your sense of self, they have destroyed you. If you never recover, if you remain in that state of pity and not get back into your power, you will hate your life.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

The wildest thing about this poem? It was originally written in 2014. Ten Years ago.

Bomikazi 🇵🇸

@Bomikazi_

3 months

This ending caught me off guard ngl!

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

They said she wasn’t big enough to perform on their stage, now she’s winning Grammys. You better keep moving when your enemies think they have defeated you. You better hold your head high when they want you to bow. You better speak life into your life over and over again. YES!

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

11 months

I am so glad I wrote Questions for Ada, I am so so glad. I don’t know why I am getting emotional thinking of all the pain I endured, why I needed to write it. I knew the women coming after me would need to feel less alone and I am so so so so glad I listened to Ovo and Nnenna.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

10 months

You’ve tried love, time to try money.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

7 months

It is one of my pet peeves. It is *that* serious to me because image is critical in communications and technology. How a message is conveyed is just as important as the message. The medium is the message. Don’t argue with me, I do not stand to be corrected.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

When pain does not have a place to go, when it is withheld in your body for months that turn to years. When it seeks to leave, and you do not let it go, sometimes, it will give you ailments that have no cure.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

I am going to make my life continuously beautiful.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

When men cannot own you, they shame you.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

You did not remember because your mind was protecting you, it was your coping mechanism.

Beyonce’s lil brother

@arealcoolguy1

3 months

What realizations have you gained from attending therapy?

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

The way social media is pressuring some of you to stop dreaming because you’re “too old” will be interesting to study in the future. Because I need you to stop speaking death into your fucking life. Imagine being as young as you are now (whatever your age) and thinking it’s over.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

Do not believe that your anger has to be polite. That your anger is mere emotion. As if anger has not changed laws, as if anger is not needed to disrupt what hurts us. As if anger cannot be righteous.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

3 months

You come from a country where challenging your professors is seen as disrespectful. You have no original thoughts, shun intellectualism while embracing sensationalism. Beyond the headlines, you cannot critically engage with a text. You are always loud and wrong.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

18 days

No matter the wreckage, no matter the shame they try to place on you, no matter how many times you have failed, no matter how many ways you have felt unloved. Do not think tolerance is love. Choose yourself, the wound of the child must be healed by the adult you are.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

Please, build your community. Find your own people that love you, your work and how you appear to the world. Present yourself in your light and watch the darkness take flight. Let them find you. Share your gift, talent, passion, voice. Do not believe that voice in your head.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

Rule 7: Focus on your growth. Envy is a poison, be grateful. Rule 8: Take care of your mind. Rule 9: Listen to good counsel. Have at least one person that grounds you. Rule 10: Never ever speak darkness into your life. Self-depreciation is not “fun/cool” stop that nonsense.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

“you call me “sister" not because you are my blood but because you understand the kind of tragedies we both have endured to come back into loving ourselves again & again.” — Questions for Ada

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

I really want people to understand it doesn’t happen in a day. Because fighting for your life this month might just mean getting into the right headspace. Today, it might just be waking up and writing down your dreams again, getting excited about your life. This is fighting.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

Tracy Chapman’s face is so filled with a certain softness and light. No wonder she’s reclusive, how can such light exist in this world for so long if she did not have to protect it. My God, one could write an entire poem about her face and describing it as beautiful isn’t enough.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 years

I hope the darkness does not call you by name anymore. If it still does, I hope you find ways to remember your light. Yellow, Ijeoma Umebinyuo. 💛

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

What I love about having someone in your corner is how they can be your anchor. How they may not silence the noise, but they can help shut the door. That shutting the door can lower the noise. It is a beautiful thing, it becomes even more beautiful as you get older.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

Loving him was like breathing, it came so naturally to me. Love can be a cruel joke sometimes. But God, how we loved each other cannot fit into a hundred poems.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

When you are angry enough, you will change your life. Not when you’re sad enough, not when you throw yourself a pity-party and invite people who enable you. It is when you are angry enough that you will begin to change your life.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

May your struggles never be used to shame you. Your love never turned into a curse. Your heart never turn to stone. May you never give up on yourself. May you never fall and forget your glory within. However, if any of these happen, may you always remember to fight for your life.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

Nothing that is yours will ever be taken from you. It’s there, you just need to keep moving and working to get it.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

I cannot believe Questions for Ada is being categorized on this website as one of the best selling poetry books of all time. Coming in at number 34. Goddamn! Something I wrote when I felt the most helpless, without a single “publicity” help from any help with readers. Damn!

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

Always remember that whenever you see this line, I wrote it as a poem in 2014. Published it in 2015. Always remember, no matter how it becomes anonymous on the internet. Ijeoma Umebinyuo was the first to ever write, “healing comes in waves.” Published in Questions for Ada.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

You can do a lot of things in this world when you stop telling yourself you are too old and it is too late. When you stop trying to stay and remain the same, when you stop resisting change. When you accept you can be many things and still be yourself. That life has cycles.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 month

Rape culture is applauding a woman for wearing clothes that are not “distracting” instead of asking yourself why a woman has to wear baggy clothes so men don’t look at her sexually.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

The thing people fail to realize is how many years of writing makes this look easy to read. For example: why didn’t I just write, “we bathe our sister…” which is what these women are doing. Words work wonders in sound and how you read it. The word “soaked” here work. Why?

Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

We soaked the body of our sister in a salt bath.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

9 months

Did we ask you to?

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

I am going to ENJOY my life this year. Build. Enjoy. Love. Build. Enjoy. Like absolutely fucking enjoy my life.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

If you learn how to be selfish and not internalize bullshit as a woman, you will be way ahead in life as you get older.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

"Forgive me father, but sometimes my God is a woman crying in the shower begging for another God to lift her burden." — Questions for Ada

simple boi: mabele & amabele

@Queen_Finxa

2 months

Day 138 Forgive me father, but sometimes my God is a woman sitting on the kitchen floor her hands holding her legs screaming for help without making a sound. -Ijeoma Umebinyuo

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

There is nothing more frightening than a powerful person with money and connections. Worse, if that person is a man.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

you truly have one life to explore your creativity and do everything within your power to never be put in a box.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

I am really sorry, but I’m not in that stage in my life to ever lower my standards. It’s okay if you can’t meet up, it’s not okay to think I have to settle for good enough. I am not anyone’s good enough and you will not be my good enough.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

2 months

I know it is hard, but do the difficult work when it seems you are unseen, when no one is cheering you on. Do it.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

An important caveat: Happiness is fleeting. I truly believe it’s not “attainable” because it’s not permanent. However, whatever the opposite of helplessness and despair is, we should always move towards that direction.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

There’s a level of confidence you get from knowing what you are talking about, being educated on certain topics you are passionate about and being self aware.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

9 months

When the woman cannot be silenced, she will be shamed.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

1 year

Do you know I came up with the concept of this book cover with the artist? That art (the lines you see) is my drawing; I believe I titled it migration/diaspora. Also, notice how the only butterfly in her head is white, without color? It represents depression.

Ancestors’ First Son™️

@_TheNewMind

1 year

@_dariussimpson “Tell me: now you are here, will you wither or bloom?” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo, “Questions for Ada.”

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

6 months

Nothing that was sent to destroy me ever did. Nothing. Even in the depth of my loneliness, in the unforgiving environment of constant pain, nothing that was sent to destroy me ever did. So, don’t believe the lie you tell yourself. You have always been worthy of your own life.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

How you were denied and punished as a child is how you have probably been punishing yourself as an adult. If ugly words were thrown at you, you’re probably extremely critical of yourself. If you were denied even a single joy, you may deny yourself joy until you are “successful”

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

4 months

Remember to be WICKED. Wicked to men, wicked to people who harmed you, wicked to people who want to see you fail. Win out of spite. Get better out of spite. Spite is king. Be selfish. Glow out of spite. Renew your wickedness card when you slip and forget who you are.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

10 months

RIP to all the pages on instagram that were struck with copyright violation this week, because they posted my work without crediting me and/or putting my name next to it. Keep it up, I am relentless and wicked.

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Ijeoma Umebinyuo

@ijeomaumebinyuo

5 months

There are many times when poetry is my prayer. For war, there’s Achebe. For spirituality, there’s Okigbo. For homeland, there’s Faiz. For a body as woman as mine, there’s Lucille Clifton. For a lover, there’s Sonia Sanchez. For calling myself back to life, there’s Ntozake Shange.

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