Zadie Smith

And what I really mean is I don't like this at all.

And I'm really unhappy.

So I believe in it as a concept because I have experienced it.

But if there are a generation of feminists who find that concept patronizing or hierarchical, then their feminism will go from a different point.

But that's the feminism I was raised in, and that's the one that I experientially find to be true.

I don't want to talk for my daughter, but I would say that like any good teenage daughter, anything I am, she'd like to be the opposite of.

So I don't know if she would even call herself feminist, but I don't know.

The opposition, yeah.

That's just what it is.

But I notice now, coming around the other side, that you're able to admire your parents more later.

These are not very new things to say, but I really experienced, like with my own mother, the kind of oppositions we had when I was a teenager.

Now, you're able to see things in the round.

You're able to see, look at this remarkable woman who came to a country she knew nothing about,

Raised children alone for the most part.

My parents were divorced pretty early.

Made her own life on very little money.

Then wrote a novel, for God's sake.

Like, you can admire this person as an adult in a way that is harder when you're a kid, when you're kind of fighting for survival, or that's how it feels.

Particularly from strong mothers.

My mother's an extremely strong person and extremely strong personality, and kids find that hard.