CANR
WORK TITLE:
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.chimamanda.com/
CITY:
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COUNTRY: Nigeria
NATIONALITY: Nigerian
LAST VOLUME: LRC April 2021
http://www.npr.org/2013/06/27/195598496/americanah-author-explains-learning-to-be-black-in-the-u-s http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/11291.Chimamanda_Ngozi_Adichie * http://theculture.forharriet.com/2016/07/chimamanda-adichie-reveals-she-had-baby.html#axzz4DYSDZ500
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 15, 1977, in Abba, Nigeria (some sources say Enugu, Nigeria); immigrated to United States, c. 1996; daughter of James Nwoye and Ifeoma Aidichie; married Ivara Esege; children: a daughter.
EDUCATION:Attended University of Nigeria and Drexel University; graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University (summa cum laude), 2001; Johns Hopkins University, M.A. (creative writing), 2003; Yale University, M.A. (African studies), 2008.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and educator. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Hodder Fellow, 2005-06; Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, visiting writer, 2008; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, instructor.
AWARDS:Joint winner, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Short Story Competition, 2002, for “That Harmattan Morning”; David T. Wong International Short Story Prize, PEN Center, 2002, for “Half of a Yellow Sun”; O. Henry Award, 2003, for “American Embassy”; Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, both for Purple Hibiscus; Orange Broadband Prize for fiction, joint winner of Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and joint winner of PEN “Beyond Margins” Award, all 2007, Bailey’s women’s prize, 2015, and Winner of Winners Prize, Women’s Prize for Fiction, 2020, all for Half of a Yellow Sun; MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” 2008; Future Award, 2008; International Nonino Prize, 2009; Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, Harvard University, 2011-12; National Book Critics Circle Award fiction prize, 2014, for Americanah; best of the best winner for fiction of the last decade, elected to be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters as a Foreign Honorary Member, 2017; PEN Pinter Prize, 2018.
RELIGION: Catholic.WRITINGS
Contributor of short fiction to literary journals, including Iowa Review, Prism International, Calyx, and Wasafiri.
The film Half of a Yellow Sun, adapted from Adichie’s novel, was released by Monterey Media.
SIDELIGHTS
Purple Hibiscus, the debut novel of Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, was greeted with enthusiasm by many critics. This coming-of-age story, focusing on a Nigerian family torn between the orderly Western world forced on them by their father and the native Igbo culture of their heritage, was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction in Great Britain. Purple Hibiscus was compared by several critics to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. The book’s “riveting opening paragraph,” as John Hartl described it in the New York Times, is perhaps the clearest homage to Achebe: “Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere.”
The story is told through the eyes of fifteen-year-old Kambili Achike. She and her older brother, Jaja, live a strict, regimented life; their father has minutely detailed schedules for them, laying out their activities for every moment of the day. He enforces this schedule, as well as a strict, fundamentalist version of Catholicism and the use of English at home within the family, through tyrannical violence frequently bordering on torture. Kambili is so traumatized by fear that she has difficulty speaking. Yet to the rest of the world, Eugene Achike is a hero, one of the few men in Nigeria brave enough to speak out publicly against the soldiers who have successfully carried out a coup against the former government. Kambili and Jaja get their first taste of freedom when they are allowed to visit their Aunty Ifeoma. This aunt is a university professor, and her crowded apartment is a haven of free thinking for Kambili and Jaja. Under Ifeoma’s care, Kambili begins to blossom, just like the rare purple hibiscus in Ifeoma’s garden that blooms despite civil war and all the other difficulties of life.
Critical reaction to Purple Hibiscus was overwhelmingly positive. Although, as Heather Hewett noted in the Women’s Review of Books, Adichie’s coming- of-age narrative “feels familiar, in Adichie’s hands it is not formulaic. She captivates her reader with alternating moments of suspense and horror, surprising us with unexpected twists and fresh ways of looking at the world. In particular, her lush, vivid descriptions linger long after the novel is over.” Palm Beach Post reviewer Lauren Gold also praised Adichie’s “strong, lyrical voice,” commenting: “Every character has dimension; every description resonates like cello music.” This is an “impressively mature debut,” Lisa Gee declared on the Orange Prize for Fiction website, and “a superb coming-of-age novel wherein it really means something to come of age.”
Adichie explained to Eve Daniels in an interview posted on the Minnesota Public Radio website: “The ‘war and hunger’ kind of coverage Africa gets in the news distorts reality. Of course there are wars and there is hunger in many African countries, but there are also millions of normal people who are going about their lives, with gains and losses, love and pain, just like everyone else. I hope my fiction will enable Americans to see the human, and in many ways ordinary, lives of Nigerians.”
Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun furthered her literary reputation. Explaining the difference between her first and second novels, Adichie told an interviewer for the BBC: “ Half of a Yellow Sun is much more important in the sense that it doesn’t belong to me alone. It’s different because, amongst other things, it goes beyond any sense of personal accomplishment. Half of a Yellow Sun is a book that I felt I had to write, in way that I can’t even describe. I was happy to see it come out at last, because I know how difficult it was to write, what it took.” The story is told from several perspectives and is set during the bloody civil war that ravaged Nigeria during the 1960s. It traces the stories of a middle-class woman named Olanna whose family has been massacred, a boy who leaves his poor village to work as a servant to a university professor, and a foreigner who falls in love with Olanna’s sister.
In Booklist, Donna Seaman observed that “Adichie surpasses her award-winning debut … with a magnificent novel.” She added: “Adichie has masterminded a commanding, sensitive epic about a vicious civil war.” In African Business, a critic wrote that “this extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense,” about “moral responsibility” and “the end of colonialism.” The critic added: “Immensely powerful and with a sweeping pace, this will be one of the most talked-about books of the year.” Adichie, remarked Women’s Review of Books writer E. Frances White, “is skilled at drawing her readers into the daily terror and brutality wrought by war. We watch as the characters’ genteel world of academia disintegrates, tugging at our own senses of security.” White also pointed out: “Importantly, she writes into a rich tradition—virtually every major Nigerian writer has felt compelled to address this devastating civil war.”
The Thing around Your Neck, Adichie’s first collection of short stories, was also greeted with critical praise. The book contains twelve short stories, all of which are set in either the United States or Nigeria. The stories portray characters on the verge of breakdown, from several who are haunted by ghosts to a rich college student who joins a gang. Another story features a woman who barely escapes a violent riot. Nigerian immigrants are portrayed as they struggle to adjust to life in the United States, and many find their new home boring and soulless.
Adichie is “a brilliant writer whose characters stay with you for a long time,” Leslie Patterson remarked in Library Journal. In the London Guardian, Aminatta Forna observed: “The least successful stories are those where the author’s desire to make a statement is too plainly felt, the most successful when she concentrates on character, situation or … how lives are changed in a single moment. Then the powerful themes close to Adichie’s heart shine through, but never overshadow writing of clarity and brilliance.” To Books & Culture writer Susan Vanzanten, Adichie’s collection “revolves around questions of identity in an era of globalization. We live in a world of ethnic neighborhoods with hazy geographic borders, a world of immigration, diasporas, and hybridization. The ‘things’ hanging around all of our necks are complicated strands of social, cultural, religious, and historical roots that gradually weave into the cord of one’s self.” Vanzanten added: “Faith is a central part of what it means to be a global citizen in today’s flat world, and Adichie’s potent fiction helps us to recognize the truths and the lies, the connections and the divisions, that characterize our time.”
The title of Adichie’s third novel, Americanah, is a Nigerian word used to disparage Nigerians who have been to the United States and come back with American affectations. Part love story, part examination of race, displacement, and political unrest, the novel focuses on Ifemelu and Obinze, Nigerians in Lagos who become friends in school but in time fall in love. Ifemelu, beautiful and naturally aristocratic, is fortunate to escape Nigeria during a period of military dictatorship by earning a scholarship to an American university. Obinze intends to join her, but young black men find it difficult to obtain visas to gain entry to post-9/11 America, so he immigrates to London, illegally. He has little choice but to take menial jobs that sap his self-esteem, and ultimately he is arrested and deported back to Nigeria. Meanwhile, Ifemelu faces privations and indignities in New York, then in Philadelphia. To earn money, she takes a job as a babysitter for a wealthy white family and begins to write a controversial blog titled “Raceteenth or Various Observations about American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black.” The blog, with its incisive and highly provocative observations about racism that reflect the author’s experience learning what it means to be black in America, earns her notoriety and a fellowship to Princeton University, where she embarks on romantic affairs first with a white man and later with an African American professor at Yale. In time, she decides to return to Nigeria, where Obinze has grown wealthy as a property developer despite the nation’s corruption and political turmoil.
Americanah was greeted with high critical praise. A contributor to Publishers Weekly called the novel “compelling,” “important” and “vibrant” and concluded that the author “illuminates the precarious tightrope existence of culturally and racially displaced immigrants.” Describing the novel as “a sensitive portrayal of distant love, broken affinities and culture clash,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor found it “elegantly written” and “emotionally believable.” In Library Journal, Sally Bissell remarked: “Witty, wry, and observant, Adichie is a marvelous storyteller who writes passionately about the difficulty of assimilation and the love that binds a man, a woman, and their homeland.” For Mike Peed, writing for the New York Times Book Review, the book is “witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both worldly and geographically precise, a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false.” Richard Warnica agreed, writing in Maclean’s that Americanah is “a work of uncommon depth and incisive observation.” Finally, Claire Lowdon commented in New Statesman: “Adichie’s observations are always sharp, intelligent, humorous and humane. They will challenge the way you think about race and show you a radically defamiliarised version of western society, as seen through African eyes.”
Adichie adapted a 2012 TEDx talk on feminism for her 2014 book, We Should All Be Feminists. She draws on her own experiences to argue for a feminism for the twenty-first century that is founded in awareness and inclusion. “Adichie has that great gift of distilling concepts that could otherwise be too academic, too heady, into what feels like a line your wise older sister just uttered while fixing her hair,” commented Julia Burke in the Progressive. Burke added: “To citizens of the world who haven’t embraced feminism: consider this book your formal invitation.” Similarly, Lauren Fornier, writing in Canadian Woman Studies, noted: “This book takes what seems obvious to Adichie—and other well-read feminists—and effectively breaks it down into the fundamentals for a wider readership.” Likewise, School Library Journal reviewer Shelley Diaz concluded: “An eloquent, stirring mustread for budding and reluctant feminists.”
In her 2021 work, Notes on Grief, Adichie adapts an article she wrote for the New Yorker on the death of her father in Nigeria from sudden kidney failure in the summer of 2020 in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. She and her family, like millions around the globe, had to mourn that death without being physically together, arranging for the funeral over zoom calls. The author details how this death shook her, but she also profiles her father’s achievements in the work, from surviving the Biafran war to becoming a statistics professor. A Kirkus Reviews critic termed this an “affecting paean,” as well as an “elegant, moving contribution to the literature of death and dying.”
Adichie once told CA: “I have been writing since I could spell. I did not have a conscious moment where something or someone got me interested in writing. What I think nurtured the innate desire to write was that I grew up surrounded by books in my parents’ house on a university campus.
“Chinua Achebe will always be the most important writer for me because his work influenced not so much my style as my writing philosophy: reading him emboldened me, gave me permission to write about things I knew well. I am influenced by everything I read. I read bad fiction and it influences me in such a way that I know what never to do. I read good fiction and it makes things flow for me, as it were. I generally prefer quiet, careful writing, story and style done well, literature that makes one think of that interesting word ‘art.’
“I write when it comes. I like lots of natural light or very bright artificial light. I do lots of revision and rewriting. I can spend days tweaking one sentence.
“Purple Hibiscus, my first novel, is my favorite book I have written. It has no competitors at the moment.”
After the publication of Notes on Grief, Adichie contributed an essay to an anthology of writings by Nigerian authors called Of This Our Country: Acclaimed Nigerian Writers on the Home, Identity and Culture They Know. Edited by Nancy Adimora and Ore Agbaje-Williams, the collection features, as Eddie Hewitt put it in his review for Connected Cultures, the “stories, personal histories, anecdotes, thoughts and opinions” of 24 Nigerian authors who discuss a wide variety of topics, including food, weddings, education, religion, social class, and much more. Adichie’s essay “Still Becoming,” which was featured in Esquire magazine in 2019, is a reflection of the author’s life in Lagos, the biggest city in Nigeria. She spends most of the essay describing the city’s population, comprising a mix of native citizens and immigrants, and discussing the disparities between social classes, the major religions practiced there, and the hustle and bustle of city life. At night, some areas of the city are cast in shadows due to power cuts, while other parts are “bright and glittering,” Adichie reminisces. She ends “Still Becoming” with a meditation on the welcoming nature of the city, saying, “one sees the promise of this city: that you will find your kin, where you fit, that there is a space somewhere in Lagos for you.”
In his review, Hewitt lauded the collection as a whole. He noted that “[t]he collection presents great variety and unique perspectives” and “[a]ll the essays … come together in an impressive volume.” Before diving into the individual contributions, Hewitt expressed that he “enjoyed and learnt from all the chapters.” However, he was left wanting after reading “Still Becoming.” He admitted that the essay was “informative,” but he “was hoping for something a bit more captivating and visceral” considering her “supreme talent.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
African Business, October 1, 2006, review of Half of a Yellow Sun, p. 65.
Africa News Service, October 13, 2008, “Chimamanda Adichie Bags $500,000 ‘Genius’ Fellowship.”
Birmingham Post (Birmingham, England), May 22, 2004, Reena Gopal, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 53.
Black Issues Book Review, September-October, 2003, Malcolm Venable, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 62; November, 2003, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 17; January 1, 2007, Marie- Elena John, review of Half of a Yellow Sun.
Booklist, September 15, 2003, Joanne Wilkinson, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 208; August 1, 2006, Donna Seaman, review of Half of a Yellow Sun, p. 39.
Books & Culture, July 1, 2009, Susan Vanzanten, “Heavy Laden.”
Bookseller, June 8, 2007, “Orange Glow for Adichie’s Yellow Sun,” p. 14.
Bookwatch, April, 2004, James A. Cox and Diane C. Donovan, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 3.
Canadian Woman Studies, vol. 31, no. 1-2, 2014, Lauren Fornier, review of We Should All Be Feminists, p. 143.
Capital Times (Madison, WI), November 21, 2003, Heather Lee Schroeder, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. A11.
Christian Science Monitor, July 31, 2009, Marjorie Kehe, review of The Thing around Your Neck, p. 25.
Commonweal, December 5, 2003, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 27.
Daily Post (Liverpool, England), May 21, 2004, Emyr Williams, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 8.
Daily Telegraph (London, England), March 6, 2004, Christopher Hope, review of Purple Hibiscus; April 27, 2004, Nigel Reynolds, “Young Nigerian Writer Eyes Top Fiction Award: The Orange Prize Shortlist Has a Few Surprises,” p. 11.
Europe Intelligence Wire, September 24, 2008, “Eastern Alumna Chimamanda Adichie Named 2008 MacArthur Fellow.”
Evening Standard (London, England), April 30, 2004, Alison Roberts, review of Purple Hibiscus and interview, p. 22.
Evening Times (Glasgow, Scotland), February 28, 2004, Sheila Hamilton, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 12.
Financial Times, April 25, 2009, Isobel Dixon, “Beyond the Yellow Sun; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Collection of Nigerian Lives,” p. 16.
Guardian (London, England), April 27, 2004, John Ezard, “Debut Novel from Nigeria Storms Orange Shortlist,” p. 9; May 16, 2009, Aminatta Forna, review of The Thing around Your Neck.
Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2003, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 973; May 1, 2009, review of The Thing around Your Neck; April 15, 2013, review of Americanah; March 15, 2021, review of Notes on Grief.
Library Journal, August, 2003, Ellen R. Cohen, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 127; April 15, 2009, Leslie Patterson, review of The Thing around Your Neck, p. 88; May 1, 2013, Sally Bissell, review of Americanah, p. 67.
Maclean’s, June 24, 2013, Richard Warnica, review of Americanah, p. 68.
New Statesman, March 29, 2004, Michele Roberts, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 54; July 12, 2013, Claire Lowdon, “A Kind of Loving,” review of Americanah, p. 52.
New York Times Book Review, November 23, 2003, John Hartl, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 24; August 30, 2009, “African/ American,” p. 16; June 9, 2013, Mike Peed, “Realities of Race,” review of Americanah, p. 12.
Observer (London, England), March 21, 2004, Hephzibah Anderson, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 17.
Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, FL), October 26, 2003, Lauren Gold, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. J7.
Progressive, April 4, 2015, Julia Burke, review of We Should All Be Feminists, p. 41.
Publishers Weekly, August 18, 2003, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 53; March 25, 2013, review of Americanah, p. 41.
San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 2003, Sandip Roy, review of Purple Hibiscus.
School Library Journal, December, 2003, Molly Connally, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 176; February, 2016, Shelley Diaz, review of We Should All Be Feminists, p. 110.
Sentinel Poetry, November, 2003, Ike Anya, “In the Footsteps of Chinua Achebe: Enter Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,” p. 11.
Socialist Review, July, 2004, Liv Lewitschnik, review of Purple Hibiscus.
Spectator, May 4, 2013, Anthony Cummins, “Exotic, Yet Familiar,” review of Americanah, p. 40.
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), October 19, 2003, John Habich, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. E1.
Sunday Times (London, England), February 29, 2004, Lindsay Duguid, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 52.
Times (London, England), March 16, 2004, Jack Malvern, “First-Time Authors Lead Fresh Assault on Orange Prize,” p. 11.
Times Literary Supplement, April 9, 2004, Ranti Williams, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 23.
Voice of Youth Advocates, February, 2004, Jamie S. Hansen, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 482.
Washington Post Book World, January 4, 2004, Bill Broun, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 8.
Women’s Review of Books, July, 2004, Heather Hewett, review of Purple Hibiscus, p. 9; May 1, 2007, E. Frances White, “While the World Watched.”
World Literature Today, March 1, 2006, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”; January 1, 2007, Alan Cheuse, review of Half of a Yellow Sun; November 1, 2008, “Chimamanda Adichie Awarded MacArthur Fellowship”; September 1, 2009, Emma Dawson, review of The Thing around Your Neck.
ONLINE
Advocate, https://www.advocate.com/ (December 2, 2022), Trudy Ring, “Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Goes Anti-Trans Again.”
All Things Considered, NPR, https://www.npr.org/ (June 17, 2015), Anastasia Tsioulcas, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Directs Fiery Essay at Former Student — and Cancel Culture.”
BBC, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/ (July 26, 2010), author interview; (November 12, 2020), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Voted Best Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner”; (November 30, 2022), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Author Warns about ‘Epidemic of Self-censorship.'”
CEO, https:// www.theceomagazine.com/ (March 4, 2020), “How Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Redefined 21st Century Feminism.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, http://chimamanda.com (April 17, 2021).
Connected Cultures, https://www.connected-cultures.com/ (November 6, 2021), Eddie Hewitt, review of Of This Our Country.
Curled Up with a Good Book, http://www.curledup.com/ (November 3, 2004), review of Purple Hibiscus.
Elle, https://www.elle.com/ (March 29, 2022), Riza Cruz, “Shelf Life: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”
Fantastic Fiction, https://www.google.com/ (April 17, 2021), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”
Guardian (London, England), https://www.theguardian.com/ (February 11, 2021), Alison Flood, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Publish Memoir about Her Father’s Death”; (November 28, 2022), Zoe Williams, author interview.
Half of a Yellow Sun, http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/ (July 26, 2010).
Image, https://imagejournal.org/ (January 23, 2023), Susan VanZanten, “A Conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”
JSTOR Daily, https:// daily.jstor.org/ (August 29, 2018), Hope Reese, “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I Became Black in America.”
L3: Liege Language and Literature, http://www.l3.ulg.ac.be/ (February 18, 2011), author profile and interview.
Minnesota Public Radio, http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/ (August 21, 2003), Eve Daniels, interview with Adichie; (October 21, 2003), Heather McElhatton, review of Purple Hibiscus.
New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/ (December 1, 2022), Laura May Todd, author interview.
Nigerians in America, http://www.nigeriansinamerica.com/ (October 10, 2003), Ikechukwu Anya, “In the Footsteps of Achebe: Enter Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigeria’s Newest Literary Voice.”
Nigerian Village Square website, http://www.nigeriavillagesquare1.com/ (November 3, 2004), Wale Adebanwi, “Nigerian Identity Is Burdensome,” interview.
NPR’s Fresh Air from WHYY, http://www.npr.org/ (July 27, 2013), author interview.
Orange Prize for Fiction, http:// www.orangeprize.co.uk/ (November 3, 2004), “Shortlisted Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”; Lisa Gee, review of Purple Hibiscus.
Random House, http://www.randomhouse.com/ (November 3, 2004), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”
TED, https:// www.ted.com/ (April 17, 2021), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”
Times of India, https: //timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ (February 15, 2021), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Opens Up about Loss and Grief in New Book.”
Vulture, https:// www.vulture.com/ (July 9, 2018), David Marchese, “In Conversation: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the Novelist on Being a “Feminist Icon,” Philip Roth’s Humanist Misogyny, and the Sadness in Melania Trump.”
Zoetrope, http:// www.all-story.com/ (November 3, 2004), “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”*
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Enugu, Nigeria in 1977. She grew up on the campus of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where her father was a professor and her mother was the first female Registrar. She studied medicine for a year at Nsukka and then left for the US at the age of 19 to continue her education on a different path. She graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in Communication and Political Science.
She has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Arts degree in African History from Yale University. She was awarded a Hodder fellowship at Princeton University for the 2005-2006 academic year, and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University for the 2011-2012 academic year. In 2008, she received a MacArthur Fellowship.
She has received honorary doctorate degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, Haverford College, Williams College, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Amherst College, Bowdoin College, SOAS University of London, American University, Georgetown University, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, Skidmore College and University of Johannesburg.
Ms. Adichie’s work has been translated into over thirty languages.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), won the Orange Prize. Her 2013 novel Americanah won the US National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013.
She has delivered two landmark TED talks: her 2009 TED Talk The Danger of A Single Story and her 2012 TEDx Euston talk We Should All Be Feminists, which started a worldwide conversation about feminism and was published as a book in 2014.
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.
Her most recent work, Notes On Grief, an essay about losing her father, was published in 2021.
She was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2015. In 2017, Fortune Magazine named her one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders. She is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Ms. Adichie divides her time between the United States and Nigeria, where she leads an annual creative writing workshop.
For a detailed bibliography, please see the independent “The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Website” maintained by Daria Tunca.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Nigeria (b.1977)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 and grew up in Nigeria. She moved to the United States to attend college and majored in communication and political science. In 2002, she was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her fiction has been published in literary journals including the Iowa Review, Prism International, Other Voices, Zoetrope All-Story, Calyx, and Wasafiri. Her stories have also been selected for Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and BBC awards. Purple Hibiscus, her first novel, will be published by Algonquin in October 2003. She is presently a student in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Genres: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction
Novels
Purple Hibiscus (2003)
Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
Americanah (2013)
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Omnibus
Half of a Yellow Sun / Americanah / Purple Hibiscus (2014)
Things Fall Apart / Their Eyes Were Watching God / Half of a Yellow Sun (2018) (with Chinua Achebe and Zora Neale Hurston)
Matchbook Classics Box Set (2019) (with J G Ballard, Jean-Dominque Bauby, Penelope Fitzgerald, Jonathan Franzen, Hilary Mantel, Alexander Masters, Tim O'Brien, Annie Proulx and Lorna Sage)
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Collections
The Thing Around Your Neck (2009)
One World (2009) (with Vanessa Gebbie and Jhumpa Lahiri)
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Novellas
Imitation (2015)
The Arrangements (2016)
The Shivering (2016)
Zikora (2020)
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Series contributed to
Black Stars
1. The Visit (2021)
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O. Henry Prize Stories
The Best Short Stories 2021 (2021)
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Non fiction
We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017)
We Should All Be Feminists: The Desk Diary 2021 (2020)
Notes on Grief (2021)
Shelf Life: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists takes our literary survey.
BY RIZA CRUZPUBLISHED: MAR 29, 2022
chimamanda ngozi adichie, shelf life, we should all be feminists
MANNY JEFFERSON / ILLUSTRATION BY YOUSRA ATTIA
Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
Knopf We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal
We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal
Now 38% Off
$12 at Amazon
If like Beyoncé and Maria Grazia Chiuri, you were inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2012 TEDx talk, “We Should All Be Feminists” – the speech that was sampled on “Flawless” and graced Dior T-shirts – it became a 2014 book and now We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal (Knopf).
Adichie is the author of three works of nonfiction, a short story collection, and three novels including the Orange Prize-winning Half of a Yellow Sun (won the best book in the past 25 years of the award, now known as the Women’s Prize) and the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah.
The Nigeria-born, U.S.- and Nigeria-based author studied medicine for a while before moving to the United States to study at Drexel University, then Eastern Connecticut State University. She has a master’s degree in African Studies from Yale University and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University. (Her book was taught in one of her classes.)
She started out writing poetry and plays; was a MacArthur Fellow, on the list of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, a conversation partner of Michelle Obama (on Becoming) and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel (on politics and feminism), and a Boots No7 face; leads her annual Purple Hibiscus Trust creative writing workshop; once lived in a house where Chinua Achebe lived; and is a NYPL Literary Lion. Her given name is Ngozi Grace (Grace was also her mother’s name); her Catholic confirmation name is Amanda, which she then altered to Chimamanda (Igbo for “My God will not fail”).
She can’t swim or dance and likes art, flowers, and film but doesn’t much care for American comedies. Below, books she does.
The book that:
…made me weep uncontrollably:
Zain E. Asher’s Where the Children Take Us because it is so heartbreaking in recounting the tragedy of a family and the resilience of a remarkable mother.
…I recommend over and over again:
The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta because it is a fast-moving and complex novel about the realities of working-class life in British-colonized Nigeria.
…I’d like turned into a Netflix show:
Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns illuminates the Great Migration of African-Americans with true-life stories and as a TV series would be both entertaining and enlightening.
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...I last bought:
Hunting Evil by Guy Walters because I am deeply fascinated by Germany during the Second World War and still cannot believe how easily—and unnecessarily—so many Nazis were allowed to get away with war crimes.
...has the best title:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez because there is a nostalgic quality to the title that I find unbearably moving. I also very much admire the title On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.
…has a sex scene that will make you blush:
I’m not sure about blushing but Kate Christensen’s The Great Man has a sex scene between two people in their 80s, which is unusual, and I found it believable and charming.
…describes a house I’d want to live in:
I’d love to visit the house in Reef by Romesh Gunesekera, in Sri Lanka.
…should be on every college syllabus:
White Rage by Carol Anderson should be on every American college syllabus because it tells the many forgotten stories of American history in an engaging way.
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...I’ve re-read the most:
I dip in and out of Elizabeth Hardwick’s beautiful and unique novel Sleepless Nights, which I read as I would good poetry, with utter awe.
…I never returned to the library (mea culpa):
It’s been at least 30 years now but I don’t think I ever returned The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig to the children’s library on the campus of the University of Nigeria, where I grew up.
…sealed a friendship:
My beloved friend the late Binyavanga Wainaina and I met on a writers’ website and when it turned out Camara Laye’s The African Child had been important to us both as children, we knew our friendship was made to last.
...everyone should read:
Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God because it is quite simply one of the best novels ever written.
...fills me with hope:
Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby, because it introduced me to many talented writers that I might not otherwise have read, and it makes me remember, with gratitude, the women who came before me.
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...surprised me:
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez surprised me because even though I know the world is male-dominated, I had never seen the case for data bias presented so convincingly and thoroughly (and with personality!)
Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:
I don’t know about living in, as I like a bit more room, but Jazzhole, the lovely eclectic bookstore in Lagos, is very much worth visiting.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Directs Fiery Essay At Former Student — And Cancel Culture
June 17, 20215:00 AM ET
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Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Paris in Jan. 2020.
Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Two literary stars from Nigeria are having a very public feud right now, and their personal beefs are heavily overlaid with big questions about feminism, gender identity, cancel culture, social media and anti-LGBTQ violence.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — author of such books as Americanah and Half a Yellow Sun, and a celebrated feminist who has been sampled by Beyoncé — has accused a younger writer who was once her student, Akwaeke Emezi, of being an opportunist who has tried to build on their former teacher's fame. In return, Emezi, a nonbinary person, says that Adichie "hates trans people," and is trying to use her platforms to oppress the queer community.
Both writers are frequently featured on NPR. Earlier this month, Emezi, who uses they/them pronouns, was invited to give a list of Pride Month reading recommendations on Morning Edition, and their latest book, Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, received a stellar review. Meanwhile, Adichie's recent Notes on Grief was hailed on WHYY's Fresh Air in May, and her Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was named one of NPR's Best Books of 2017.
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In order to understand their current battle, you have to go back a few years — and it takes some untangling to comprehend their exchanges. In an Instagram story Wednesday, Emezi resurrected their criticisms of comments that Adichie — who has championed LGBTQ rights in Nigeria, a country where it is still illegal to be LGBTQ, where anti-LGBTQ violence is common and where Twitter has recently been banned — made in 2017 to Channel 4.
The interviewer had asked Adichie about feminism as it relates to trans women. "My feeling," she said, "is that trans women are trans women. I think if you've lived in the world as a man, with the privileges the world accords to men, and then change gender, it's difficult for me to accept that then we can equate your experience with the experience of a woman who has lived from the beginning in the world as a woman, and who has not been accorded those privileges that men are."
In the land of 280 characters-or-less hot takes, some Twitter users were quick to equate Adichie with J.K. Rowling, who has been widely criticized for being anti-trans — and not without precedent. Last November, Adichie told The Guardian that Rowling's comments on gender identity were part of "a perfectly reasonable piece," from a writer whom Adichie called "a woman who is progressive, who clearly stands for and believes in diversity." (In that interview, Adichie reiterated a familiar point: she called social media takedowns "cruel and sad ... and fundamentally uninteresting," intimating that nuanced conversation is impossible online.)
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That same month, in a long Twitter thread, Emezi accused Adichie of having no regard or care for the trans community.
On Tuesday, Adichie published a lengthy essay on her own website, titled "It Is Obscene," in which the writer attempted to bring the conversation back to specific problems she has had with Emezi and another young, unnamed writer from her workshop — not over Emezi's gender identity, but over what she believes to be the younger authors' personal faults — rendered in scorched-earth language.
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In the essay, Adichie specifically accuses Emezi of using her name to boost their own career without asking permission — in publicity materials, on their book cover and even in applying for a visa to the U.S.
In Emezi's Twitter thread in November 2017, they noted that after the debut of their first novel, Freshwater, Adichie had asked for her name to be removed from Emezi's bio and promotional materials, ostensibly due to Adichie's comments about trans women. "I was okay with it," they wrote, "because to be honest, I agreed that my connection to her shouldn't be used to sell my work. We do not stand for the same things. I didn't and still don't want her name on my books."
In riposte, Adichie writes in her "It Is Obscene" essay: "A person who genuinely believes me to be a murderer cannot possibly want my name on their book cover, unless of course that person is a rank opportunist." ("Murderer" — that's apparently a reference to something that Emezi wrote on Twitter in April of this year: "When you try to deny children access to healthcare, you are trying to kill them. That's what Rowling supports, FYI, and by endorsing her, that's what Adichie also supports. Whether you want to admit that or not.")
As for Emezi's charge that she is anti-trans, Adichie comments: "This woman knows me enough to know that I fully support the rights of trans people and all marginalized people. That I have always been fiercely supportive of difference, in general."
In the "It Is Obscene" essay, Adichie also dives back into her frequent criticisms of social media and cancel culture — positions that for some observers denote an age divide. "We have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow," she writes. "I have spoken to young people who tell me they are terrified to tweet anything, that they read and re-read their tweets because they fear they will be attacked by their own."
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On Wednesday, Emezi posted Instagram stories and a lengthy IGTV video responding to Adichie's essay. "She wrote an incendiary post that she knew would send hundreds of transphobic and homophobic people to our social media, flooding our mentions with violent comments," Emezi wrote in one story. "What do you think her goal was with that? It's not a coincidence that the writers she's targeting are queer and trans."
Emezi said that the video was made explicitly in lieu of giving a statement to journalists. "Here's the thing, as we should all know by now," they said. "You can't 'both sides' oppression. You can't 'both sides' when one party has power and is punching down at a more marginalized party." They added that, especially in the context of widespread anti-LGBTQ sentiment in Nigeria, this situation has provided anti-trans and anti-queer forces another opportunity to attack those communities.
A Conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Susan VanZanten | Issue 65
Born in Nigeria in 1977, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in the university town of Nsukka, living for a time in a house once occupied by Chinua Achebe. After briefly studying medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria, Adichie moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins and in African studies from Yale. A 2005-06 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, Adichie has been widely heralded as one of the new global voices in African literature. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (Algonquin), won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and her second, Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate), won the Orange Prize for Fiction, one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious annual literary awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Adichie’s work has been translated into thirty languages, and her short stories have been published in journals such as the New Yorker, Granta, Iowa Review, and Zoetrope. She received the O. Henry Prize in 2003 for her short story “American Embassy,” which appears in the recent collection, The Thing Around Your Neck (Fourth Estate). After receiving a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Adichie now divides her time between the United States and Nigeria. She was interviewed by Susan VanZanten.
Image: You’ve said, “I didn’t choose writing, writing chose me.” How did this happen? How did you discern this calling to become a writer? Would you identify it as a vocation?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I have writer friends with elaborate and exciting stories about how they came to writing, but I just don’t have that. I wrote from when I was six. Even then I knew that this was something that truly mattered to me. When I was ten, though I had a lot of friends, I remember looking forward to when I could go up to my father’s study and be alone and write. It was considered something odd for me to want to do when it was sunny outside. Now, as an adult, I realize it’s what I care about. It gives me a sense that this is what I am meant to be doing.
Image: Would you use the word vocation to talk about that?
CNA: I think so. I’ve often said that even if I hadn’t been fortunate enough to be published I would be writing. I love that I am published, and it was a choice that I made to try and get published. But publishing is very different from writing.
Of course one wants to be published. Otherwise I would just write in my diary and put it in a drawer. But publishing is public, which is why I feel a sense of distance from my books after they come out. I get stupidly emotional about my own work when I am with it alone. I don’t show people what I am doing until I am done, until I feel comfortable enough to let it out. The writing part is very private and gives me that marvelous high when it’s going well, but when I finally send something out to my editor, that’s when I have to put on my practical glasses and think about the work in a less intuitive and more pragmatic way. My editor will say, “I don’t think this character would say that.” And I will think, “Well, in my head she did, but all right.”
Image: Initially you wrote poetry and plays, but you seem to have found your voice and your genre in fiction. What is it about fiction in particular that attracts you? Why are you a storyteller?
CNA: Why indeed. Because poetry’s too hard to do well. Also, my process isn’t an entirely conscious thing. I just do. But I will say that fiction is true. This is something my friends who write nonfiction and I argue about all the time. I feel that fiction is much more honest than nonfiction. I know from my limited experience in writing nonfiction, particularly memoir, that in the process of writing I am constantly negotiating different levels of self-censorship and self-protection, and protection of people I love, and sometimes protection of people I don’t necessarily care about but I worry that the reader might have biased feelings about. When I write fiction, I don’t think about any of that. Radical honesty is possible in fiction. With fictional characters, I don’t have to think about protecting anybody.
Image: So you don’t worry about people you know seeing themselves in your fiction?
CNA: They do, invariably, but no, I don’t worry about that. The funny thing is that often when I do base characters on people, they don’t know, and when I don’t, they’re convinced that I have.
Image: Many western readers in a post-secular culture don’t understand the pervasive role that religion plays in African life. Your fiction vividly depicts the presence and weight of religion, with its accounts of traditional Catholicism, African Pentecostalism, Islam, a more liberal Catholicism, and indigenous beliefs. What was it like to grow up as a Catholic in Nigeria in such a spiritually teeming world?
CNA: It was indeed spiritually teeming. But is America actually a post-secular society? I’m not sure. I think it’s quite religious as well, but it manifests itself in a different way. It’s less direct. I even think that in many ways the anti-religion movement is in itself a religion—and sometimes it is more strident than any religious movement.
What’s interesting about Nigeria, and much of sub-Saharan Africa, is how there’s a geographical element to religion. In Igboland where I come from, in southeastern Nigeria, the Presbyterian missionaries came from one side and the Irish-Catholics came from another, and they reached an agreement in the late 1880s or 1890s to respect one another’s turf (though I recently read that one of the Protestant ministers accused the Irish Catholics of encroaching on their territory and going to convert people). My grandfather converted to Catholicism in the 1920s, and my father was born in 1932, so he was baptized Catholic as a baby, and so was my mother. My family, like many families around us, were moderate Catholics. Everybody around me was religious. People went to church. It was something you didn’t question.
When I go back to Nigeria it strikes me how on Sunday people will say, “Have you been to church?” It’s expected, and they say it matter-of-factly. They’re saying it because they want to make sure. They’ll ask, “Will you come out to dinner with us? Have you gone to church, by the way?” Because if you haven’t gone to church then you can’t come to dinner because it means you’re going to evening mass. The option of not going to church doesn’t occur to people, and it doesn’t matter what denomination.
As I was growing up, we went to church every Sunday. I was drawn to religion, but I was the kid who just wouldn’t shut up. I had questions. Everybody else went to church and came home. I wanted to go to the sacristy and talk to the priest about why he said that, I’m sure much to my father’s irritation. But my parents were very, very patient people, and they continue to be. I was drawn to the drama of the Catholic Church. I would cry at Paschal Mass when we raised the candles. They would turn out all the lights and people would hold candles. When it was time to renew your vows and they would light the candles, I would burst into tears because I was so moved. I loved the smell of incense and I loved the Latin. I keep meaning to write about it. I was a happily Catholic child.
I also got into a lot of fights with Anglican friends. There was a Catholic-Protestant divide on campus, and it did affect a lot of things. Looking back now, it’s hilarious. An Anglican would say, “All you Catholics worship Mary and it means you’re going to hell.” I was very enthusiastic about those fights. I could quote the bits of the Bible that were supposed to conform to Catholic tradition, like the letter of Saint James about confession, and of course we had been taught that bits of the Revelation were about the blessed Virgin, and I would quote that as well.
Image: What about indigenous religions when you were growing up? Were they a presence?
CNA: I was among people who viewed indigenous religion with disdain mostly. I became interested in traditional Igbo religion when we would go to our ancestral hometown, and I remain interested. Like most Igbo people, we would go back for Christmases and Easters. Cousins would gather. I noticed that most of my family was Catholic but a few members of the extended family weren’t, and I remember my grandmother saying, “You can’t eat in their home because they worship idols.” Somehow the food they had was tainted. I think that’s when I started to question. I come from a culture where whenever you go into somebody’s home, they give you food; they don’t ask you if you want any, they just give it, and you’re expected to eat it. And so it was an awkward thing to go into those homes. But often those relatives didn’t give us food, because they knew. I was aware of a general Christian attitude of looking down on traditional religious adherence, an assumption that it was somehow bad. The Catholic-Protestant rivalry didn’t really have that element, because of course we had Jesus in common. People would fight about the blessed Virgin Mary and about the Rosary, but you didn’t get a sense of disdain. With traditional religion, there was.
Image: Do you think Catholicism is a western religion? How do you respond to those critics who see the growing presence of Christianity in Africa as a triumph of colonialism?
CNA: I feel ambivalent. I started to question early on, and when I got older I disliked in a visceral way the way that religion was so intertwined with western images: Jesus had to have blue eyes and blond hair, and the blessed Virgin was a beautiful blonde. Once at school during a nativity play somebody suggested that Jesus be dark, be black, and people were horrified. I remember thinking, “Well, we actually don’t know what he looked like.” People have said that Africans have made of Christianity what they will, that they have Africanized Christianity, but I am not always sure. I think they have to an extent. African Christianity has an immediacy that cuts across denominations. I go to mass in the U.S. and it seems tepid by comparison. In Africa, people are very aware of the presence of spirits. There’s the idea that we coexist with other beings in a way that’s very present.
Christianity includes ideas that are cultural rather than religious, and these ideas have been absorbed into African Christianity. This is changing, of course, but even the idea of singing Christian songs in local languages offends some people. I recently heard about a woman who was horrified because she didn’t want Igbo carols at Christmas. Only the English ones were real Christmas carols to her. But even so, the idea of Christianity as a triumph of colonialism might be too simplistic.
Image: I know you recently were doing an African Studies master’s at Yale, where Lamin Sanneh has done a lot with the spread of Christianity in Africa.
CNA: Yes, though I would listen to some of his lectures in disbelief, because his Africa wasn’t my Africa. He’s brilliant and speaks wonderfully, and his grand vision of African Christianity is wonderfully optimistic; he sees everything for the good, but I’m not so sure. In one lecture, he spoke about a Nigerian man who got sick and didn’t go to the hospital but prayed, because he felt that this was the way to cure himself. For Professor Sanneh, this was proof of the active faith people had, but I think we need to talk about the state of the healthcare system. When I was growing up in the eighties, people went to church, people were religious, but you didn’t see this kind of attitude. You see it a lot now. What’s happened in that time? Things have become worse economically. The medical center isn’t as it used to be. Before, you would go there and get free health care, good doctors; you’d get your malaria shot; you’d be fine. Now it doesn’t happen. Now it’s expensive. And so now you have a lot more people praying themselves into health. I remember pointing that out in class, and I don’t think he was pleased. I don’t want to discount faith, but I think that to talk about this thing honestly we need to talk about what’s happened to the healthcare system, and what’s happened in general in Nigeria, where our middle class is disappearing.
Image: The American memoirist Mary Karr calls herself a “cafeteria Catholic,” embracing some aspects of Catholicism and rejecting others. Do you still identify yourself as a Catholic? If so, would you be comfortable calling yourself a cafeteria Catholic? How do you make your choices?
CNA: It’s an interesting expression. There are times when I’m happy to be a cafeteria Catholic. I’m certainly not the child I was. I used to think the pope had all the answers. It really changes, and it depends on where I am, what’s happened recently in my life. I find that I am interested in the idea of faith, but I don’t know if I have faith. There are times when I am certain that I will never believe in anything, and there are other times when I find this odd longing and I think there has to be something. A friend of mine who is a priest, one of my closest friends, actually, who by the way is the reason that I haven’t entirely given up on the Catholic Church, said to me once that to seek was to find. He said to seek God is to find God. He said to me, “You’re never going to catch God and put God in a bottle. That’s what you want to do, but it’s never going to happen because of the nature of God.” And I thought, “Why does it have to be so complicated? Why can’t I capture God in a bottle?”
I suppose to an extent I am a cafeteria Catholic. The good thing—actually, it’s not a good thing—the remarkable thing about growing up Catholic is that you can never get rid of it. It’s in you. Catholics will leave the church, but it’s still there. I don’t know that I can ever run away from it.
Image: Do you still go to mass?
CNA: I do go to mass sometimes, but I’ve also been known to get up and stalk out when I felt the priest was being ridiculous. My last heated argument with a priest was in Nigeria about a year ago. After mass I went to speak to him about what I felt was his misogyny, because his entire mass was about attacking women for what they wore. He wouldn’t let you into the church if you arrived in short sleeves. “You’re showing your arms. You want to tempt men,” he would say. So I went to talk to him, and it wasn’t pleasant. I was furious. I remember feeling that this was the problem I had with religion as a whole, that this man had been given so much power. An immense power comes with being a priest, and particularly in an area like Nigeria, where there’s an automatic hero worship of religious figures and an unwillingness to criticize them.
I remember thinking, “I’m going to speak out, and I know people will support me.” I wrote a piece about it in a local newspaper, and the backlash was incredible. The editor said they had never received as many letters about anything. It was ninety-five percent against me and five percent for me. It was, “Shut up. Just because you’re a writer doesn’t mean you have a right to criticize the priest. You must listen to the priest, and, yes, women tempt men.” It was incredible, and really demoralizing for me. I haven’t been back in that church since, and I don’t know that I ever will. It was the church where I grew up. It just happens to have new management. So it’s a very complicated relationship that I have with the church.
Image: In your first novel, Purple Hibiscus, the character Eugene is a strict, authoritative and domineering father who is a devout traditional Catholic. Some reviewers view him as a thoroughly evil character and the novel as a condemnation of Catholicism, but this seems overly simplistic. How do you see Eugene, and what is the importance of the kind of Catholicism lived out by his sister, Aunty Ifeoma?
CNA: I didn’t intend for Purple Hibiscus to be an anti-Catholic book, and I think that there are alternatives to Eugene in the book. Aunty Ifeoma is the character I most admired. I am a very keen believer in the middle ground and the possibility of coexistence, and I am suspicious of extremes of either side. Eugene was not a character who I wanted to come across as a monster. I disliked what he did and didn’t like him, really, but I also felt that he somehow demanded our sympathy—a complicated sympathy, but still. And I had observed people like him. My father would tell me stories. In Igboland there was always the figure of the mean catechist, half-educated, again invested with the power of the church. They didn’t have many priests, so the catechists did a lot. They didn’t really understand this new faith, and so they would cover their ignorance with silly violence and things that are not humane. My father talked about how the catechists would beat them for being two minutes late to mass. Actually, in my hometown, at mass you still have women—mean-looking women with big sticks—walking around and hitting kids who look like they might be falling asleep.
Image: Just like the Puritans in the U.S. in the seventeenth century.
CNA: Sometimes I read about earlier forms of Christianity, and I think, “Yes, exactly. This is contemporary African Christianity.” And that’s the problem. A lot has remained static as things were passed down. In churches in Nigeria there’s a big fuss made about covering your hair. They won’t let you into the church otherwise. I just think, my God, it’s so irrelevant. Eugene, for me, was a character who made people suffer, but who also had suffered and who, in a strange way, thinks he’s doing the right thing. I find this interesting: “I’m going to beat you, but it’s for your own good. I’m going to beat goodness into you.” And, of course, he had experienced that himself. His sister, on the other hand, represents the possibility of a middle ground. She is ostensibly a happy Catholic, but she still respects her culture and doesn’t see it as a zero sum game. There’s room for everything for her.
Image: I loved both the lyricism and psychological penetration of Purple Hibiscus, but Half of a Yellow Sun is an equally stunning though very different book, chronicling the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967 to 1971. What was it like to move to writing a historical epic, Dickensian in its sprawl and detail? Did it take a lot of research? Was it difficult to manage the changes in point of view?
CNA: It nearly killed me. I don’t know if I will ever go through something like that again. Though I should never say never. It was difficult technically, because I was turning research into fiction, which I had never done before, but also emotionally, because my grandfathers died in the war and I constantly thought about them as I was writing, particularly my paternal grandfather. I would read about something that had happened and start crying. Was it like that for him, I would wonder? What did he think while he was in the refugee camp? This was a proud Igbo man who for his entire adult life had provided for his family and done the right thing, and to have to flee from his home to a refugee camp, to lose his dignity before he died—all this was heartbreaking for me. And to think about my parents was heartbreaking as well, because they lost their innocence. Like many middle-class, educated Nigerians, they were full of an enthusiastic hope. Nigeria was nearly independent. They were going to build this great giant of Africa. My father went to Berkeley for his PhD. He was offered a job to stay on, and he didn’t consider it for a minute. “We have a country to build,” he thought. He went back to Nigeria with my mother and my two sisters, and a few months later the war started. My father and many people like him really believed in the cause, believed that injustices had been done and that the way to get justice was to have an independent nation. When the war ended, for them it was a loss of innocence. They lost hope in ideas in some ways.
Image: After Nigeria achieved independence, a series of military coups and tribal violence prompted the predominantly Igbo southeastern region to secede and become the Republic of Biafra. The resulting civil war lasted for three years before Nigeria was reunited. Is Half of a Yellow Sun a Nigerian novel or a Biafran novel, or does it make a difference?
CNA: I don’t think about it like that, but if I had to say, I’d say it’s Nigerian. I am Nigerian. We have a difficult and embittered history, and there are things we haven’t addressed, but I’m Nigerian and I have never felt that Biafra should come back or anything of the sort.
Image: You’ve been called an African writer, a Nigerian writer, a feminist writer, and a postcolonial writer. I haven’t seen any description of you as a Catholic writer, which is surprising. What do you think about these kinds of labels? I noticed that in the short story “Jumping Monkey Hill,” most of the people attending the “African Writers Workshop” are ironically named only by their national and gender identity: “the Kenyan man,” “the Senegalese woman.” That story does a wonderful job of mocking the expectations that African writers sometimes face to write a particular kind of fiction. To what extent does your historical situatedness affect your writing?
CNA: Being called a Catholic writer raises the question: what is a Catholic writer? I think it was Graham Greene who said that he was a writer who happened to be Catholic. I went through a phase of being completely anti-labeling and saying, “I won’t be called anything. I’m a writer. I tell stories.” I want us to live in a world in which labels don’t matter, but we don’t, at least not yet. When I won the Orange Prize, for example, I actually became quite irritated with all the talk about being the “first African” to win. I thought, you people are making it seem as though I scaled this enormous hurdle when I’m not sure that’s exactly true. I don’t know how many Africans have been shortlisted in the past. But I got so many emails from Africans, and not just Africans but Caribbean people as well, for whom my win became something personal. A Jamaican woman who lives in London wrote to tell me how she had saved the clippings because she wanted to show them to her daughter when her daughter was older. In that case, having people see me as a black African woman was a moving moment for me, and a moment of pride.
But then other times labels can have so much baggage. It depends on the context. Sometimes someone will say “feminist writer,” and you can hear a sneer in their voice. At other times someone will use the same words and you know they’re describing your awareness of gender and justice, and they don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s the same when someone says “African writer.” Sometimes you know they consider it a slightly less worthy sub-genre of real literature, and then it becomes offensive. But at other times you realize they’re just describing what you do.
Image: With the exception of “Ghosts,” the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck depict the lives of women in contemporary Nigeria and the United States, revolving around the complications of identity in today’s global world. Ethnic neighborhoods have vague geographic borders as a result of immigration, education, and jet travel. What do you think are the constants, the grounding center, in such a life, either for you or for your characters?
CNA: Family. I do think I’m quite different from many of the characters I write about, that in many ways I am more fortunate. I don’t see myself as an immigrant. I am Nigerian. I have a Nigerian passport, but I spend a lot of time in the U.S. I consider the U.S. my second home of convenience, and it’s close to my heart, but Nigeria is still home. Nigeria is where I feel most emotionally invested. The eyes with which I look at the world are Nigerian. Sometimes here in the U.S. I see things that make me shake my head and say, “Only in America.”
Image: How does gender affect these questions of identity? Are these questions more pressing or do they take unique forms for women?
CNA: I was asked recently why my male characters seem to react to immigration differently, about how they seem either overly enthusiastic or clueless. I don’t intend for them to be. Men also struggle. But I’m primarily interested in exploring women’s experiences, I think because that’s what I know. It’s not just my story. It’s my sister’s and her friends’ and my cousins’ and their friends’. I suppose identity is central to one’s work in how it shifts depending on where one is. I have often said that I didn’t know I was black until I came to the U.S. It had never occurred to me. I’d read Roots and I was very moved by Kunta Kinte, but I never thought of myself as black. I remember in Brooklyn, after I had been in the U.S. maybe a month, an African-American man referred to me as “sister,” and I thought, “How offensive! I don’t want it.” I had watched TV and I knew that to be black was not a good thing, so I thought, “No, don’t include me in your group. I am not part of you.” It took reading and asking questions and understanding African American history, which I didn’t have much of a sense of, to accept that identity, which I am completely happy with now.
I think that immigration into places like the U.S. for Africans is always about shifting identities. When I go back to Nigeria, one of the things I like to joke about with my friends is that I get off the plane, and the heat is crazy, but I drop my race baggage. Race just doesn’t occur to me in Nigeria. You become something else, though there are still labels. There I am an Igbo woman, and there’s the stereotype of the Igbo as a penny-pinching people, so if I’m with a group of friends from different ethnic groups in Lagos and I say something like, “Oh, that’s really expensive,” they’ll say, “Oh, you Igbo woman.” And then in my hometown, I don’t have that because most people around me are Igbo. So identity shifts. I’m particularly interested in how it changes when you leave home. In the U.S. you discover race, but gender dynamics also change. I know a number of Nigerian women who have discovered that they could do things in the U.S. that in Nigeria they didn’t think they could. With your family and friends around you, you have the weight of tradition, of “how things are done.” But then you move to a new place and you think, why the heck not? That affects gender, and particularly dynamics between couples.
Image: My favorite story in The Thing Around Your Neck is “The Shivering,” which depicts the unlikely friendship of a female Nigerian graduate student at Princeton with a less-educated Nigerian man whose visa has expired and who is facing deportation. They meet when a plane crashes in Nigeria and the man, Chinedu, comes to Ukumaka’s apartment to ask her to pray with him. To what extent is this story about faith? What kind of faith does each of these characters have?
CNA: It’s the most recent story in the collection, and also in some ways my favorite. I think it came from the part of me that longs to capture God in a bottle. When I lived in Princeton, once while I was away and my brother was staying in my apartment, a plane crashed in Nigeria and the Nigerian first lady died. Somebody knocked on the door, and my brother opened it. It was a strange man, a Nigerian. He said, “I’ve come to pray about what is happening in Nigeria.” He had seen my name on the mailbox and knew someone from Nigeria lived there.
My brother said that this was a man who in Nigeria we would never be friends with. Class is very present in the way our lives work there. Even as a child, you only needed to hear the way somebody spoke English to know that they didn’t go to a good school. It meant that people were divided, so you couldn’t be friends with the kind of person who didn’t speak English well.
My brother says that he and the man prayed, and then the man left. I asked my brother how he felt afterwards, and he said, “You know, I thought it was quite nice that he came by.” We laughed about it, but I was very moved by this story. On the one hand, one could think, “How dare he invade my personal space? For all he knows, I might be a Buddhist.” But on the other hand, it made me think about how being away from home makes you want these strange bonds.
That’s how the story started. It’s about an unlikely friendship, but also about the possibility of faith, of finding the kind of faith that works for you. The woman character grew up Catholic, very much like me, and went through the establishment religion and its routines, and I think that can be quite comforting to some people, but eventually it didn’t work for her. The story becomes about how it is possible for her to find some kind of faith, a version of faith with which she can make peace.
Image: How strong is the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria? You make references to it frequently, and I sense that the character Chinedu was Pentecostal.
CNA: Pentecostalism is huge in Nigeria—and in much of sub-Saharan Africa, from what I have seen and heard and read. I have to say I dislike the version of Pentecostalism that’s sweeping across Nigeria. Not only because it’s a strange fundamentalist brand, but also because I find it un-Christian. It’s very inward-looking. I don’t find it charitable. I don’t find it to be a brand of Christianity that’s aware of the other. I suppose it makes sense: things have become quite difficult in the past twenty years in Nigeria. As I said, people could get healthcare relatively easily in the 1980s, and they no longer can. Now you have pastors who will say, “Bring all your money to the altar, and God will give you back a Mercedes.” It’s no longer about being kind to the person who lives next to you; it’s about God giving you the Mercedes. This kind of thinking has seeped into the social fabric. You go to a cocktail party or a dinner and someone will say very casually, “I am waiting on God. I have sowed my seeds and God will give me my something.”
There’s so much wrong with Pentecostalism as it is in Nigeria, though there are a few exceptions. I’ve been to quite a number of those churches, mostly because I’m curious. There’s intense drama, people being asked to kick the devil. But I feel that it exploits poor people. The most dramatic moments in these churches are when it’s time for giving money. “Sowing your seeds,” they call it. The pastor has a private jet and wears designer suits, and he’ll prance around in front of the congregation and tell them, “God gave me this.” And I think, “Well, no, actually it’s these poor people who paid for your bloody private jet.”
Pentecostalism is spreading, and a lot of the ideas have influenced the more orthodox traditional denominations. In Catholic and Anglican and Methodist services, there’s a lot more prosperity preaching.
Something else about Pentecostalism is that it sees everything remotely associated with traditional religion as bad in a no-holds-barred way. In my hometown, a number of Pentecostal groups have been burning shrines and cutting down trees, because they believe the devil lives in them, and harassing people who aren’t Christian. This is not the way to win people to your God. You do not go and burn somebody’s shrine and think that they will find your God attractive.
Image: You’ve spoken of the influence on you of Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, who is often called the father of African literature. Purple Hibiscus opens with an echo of that famous novel, and the final story in The Thing Around Your Neck essentially presents an alternative feminist rendition of the final chapter of Things Fall Apart. What is it about Achebe that inspires you? In what ways are you attempting to build on but also to move beyond his example?
CNA: I respect and love Chinua Achebe’s work, but I don’t want to be a second Chinua Achebe, or a third. I just want to be Chimamanda Adichie.
Achebe is a man of immense integrity. I believe him. There are some writers whose work you read and you think, “This is a performance. I don’t think you believe this.” And for me, fiction should be truth. There are times when I’ve thought, “I’m going to write this story because I want to show that I can.” But then I’ll think, “No, it’s a lie,” and I won’t, because life is short and I want to do what I care about. Chinua Achebe’s work is full of integrity. He does what he believes in. Growing up an Igbo child, I was fortunate to be educated, but my education didn’t teach me anything about my past. But when I read Things Fall Apart, it became my great-grandfather’s life. It became more than literature for me. It became my story. I am quite protective of Achebe’s novels in a way that I don’t think I am with any other book that I love.
Image: Who else has been important to you? What other books or writers do you love?
CNA: I fall in love and out of love quite often. I went through an Edith Wharton phase where I wanted to read everything she’d ever done, and then at some point I thought, if I read one more thing of hers, I will die.
I like Philip Roth quite a bit, much to the annoyance of my feminist friends. I like his technique, and the way he refuses to hide. I admire a writer who has the courage—and it does take courage—to look social realities in the face. It’s easy in the name of fiction to hide behind art, because you’re afraid somebody will say you’re a little too political, or that politics is not the job of fiction. But Roth is fearless, and I respect that.
Image: Is there anyone who stands on the same level as Achebe for you?
CNA: No, Chinua Achebe has the misfortune of standing alone. I grew up reading mostly English and Russian novels, and I liked them quite a bit, mostly the English ones, but until Achebe, I hadn’t read a book and felt it was mine. The other book I felt that way about was The African Child, a very slim novel by Camara Laye. I read it when I was in grade five, about the time I first read Things Fall Apart, and I remember there was something magical about it. It was about his childhood in Guinea, and there were things that were quite unfamiliar. There was a level of exoticism in it, but also a level of incredible familiarity. I remember falling in love with the book, with the beautiful melancholy of it. I keep meaning to go back and read it again and see.
Image: What effect has the MacArthur Genius Grant had on your life? What will it allow you to do as far as writing goes? Do you have a sense of where you will head in your writing from here?
CNA: I remember being absolutely thrilled and then, later, going into slight panic because I thought, “That’s it. I have no excuse.” My family started teasing me, “Oh, the genius,” but I loved the pride in my father’s voice when I told him. I have been traveling for quite a while. I was in Nigeria, organizing creative writing workshops. I like teaching, particularly in nontraditional environments. But I haven’t had silence and space in a long time, and I think that when I’m done with my book-hawking travels, we’ll see whether the grant is a blessing or not.
Image: You mention that you teach creative writing workshops. What do you tell young, aspiring creative writers?
CNA: To read and read and read. I’m a believer in reading, to see the wide range of what’s been written. I’m also a believer in reading what you dislike at least once, just to know. I often say to my students, “I’m going to have you read something I don’t like.” I don’t like cold fiction. I don’t like fiction that is an experiment. I find that often it’s the boys in the class who love the fiction I don’t like. I say to them, “I’ll tell you why I don’t like it. And, then, if you like it, I want you to tell me why.” Most of all I believe in reading for what you can learn in terms of not just craft and technique but worldview. It’s important to think about sentences and how one develops character and all of that, but also to think about what the story is as a big thing. Most of all, we have fun in the workshops. For me, it’s important that we find reasons to laugh. And we mostly do.
Interview
‘I believe literature is in peril’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie comes out fighting for freedom of speech
Zoe Williams
Fearless polemicist. … Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Fearless polemicist. … Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Photograph: Richard Ansett/BBC
As the BBC prepares to air her hard-hitting Reith Lecture, the celebrated author of Half of a Yellow Sun talks about truth, trans rights and our ‘misogyny-drenched’ planet. Plus: read an extract
Zoe Williams
@zoesqwilliams
Mon 28 Nov 2022 01.00 EST
Imeet Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie the day after she delivers and records her Reith Lecture for the BBC. She is a commanding presence: flawless to look at, serene in her confidence, vivid and trenchant in her quest to smash every point and win every argument. We meet at Broadcasting House a few hours before she leaves London for Lagos: the writer now splits her time between Nigeria and the US. In the former, she says, “life is louder, more raucous, more joyful, my cousins are there. People come into the house all the time. In the US, I have silence and I need silence as well.” It’s a neat, fleeting snapshot of who she is, troublemaker and thinker, with enough self-awareness to make space for both.
The theme for the four Reith Lectures this year is freedom, and Ngozi Adichie’s contribution, which will launch the series this Wednesday on Radio 4, is on freedom of speech. The word was that it would be a cat-among-the-pigeons moment, making all the liberals in the incredibly curated audience clutch their pearls. The stated intention is, as you’d expect from Reith’s mission, to educate and entertain. But the subtext, I think, is to set a grenade off under some issue of the day.
Ngozi Adichie didn’t get her reputation as a straight-talking provocateur from her novels. In those, her overriding agenda seems to be the urgency of the story. The first, Purple Hibiscus, published in 2003 when she was only 26, had an immediate impact, winning the Commonwealth writer’s prize and international acclaim. Half of a Yellow Sun, three years later, was a magnificent achievement, and swept away anyone who had unaccountably not noticed Purple Hibiscus, which is now on the GCSE syllabus. Ngozi Adichie is a hit with Gen Z.
Her third novel, 2013’s Americanah, was about racism in the US, to where she’d moved in order to study when she was 19. “It was because my sister was there,” she says, adding drily: “There was somebody who would give me food.” She was escaping her medical degree in Nigeria, a process she describes with her trademark graceful brevity: “Getting into medical school is really difficult. So I announced to my parents, ‘I really want to leave.’ They say, ‘Are you sure?’ And I say, ‘Yes.’ And they say, ‘OK.’ My friends said to me, ‘That’s like a fairytale.’ You do not go to African parents and say, ‘I want to leave medicine’ and they just say, ‘Yes.’ It really did make a difference that they supported me.”
This whole trans thing – I did not know I was walking into anything. I thought I had said something self-evident
It was two Ted talks – The Danger of a Single Story in 2009 and We Should All Be Feminists in 2012 – that marked her out as a persuader, a polemicist, a contrarian. “I didn’t think the talks would become what they have become,” she says. The first, in which she discusses the dominance of the caucasian experience in the literary canon, has been watched by 27 million people; the second was turned into a book which became a global bestseller and is distributed free to all Swedish 16-year-olds.
“With The Danger of a Single Story,” she continues, “people are not used to Africans taking this position. You know, we’re supposed to constantly be in a state of gratitude, as Africans. And here I was saying, ‘Let’s all do better.’ I remember thinking, ‘They probably won’t even clap, but that’s fine’.” She thought something similar before We Should All Be Feminists, “which I was scribbling frantically just before I went on stage, because I hadn’t prepared properly. It was an African Ted. Feminism is not a subject that’s popular on my continent. So again I was thinking, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ And then they gave me a standing ovation.”
In her Reith Lecture, Ngozi Adichie makes a passionate, trenchant call-to-arms, and argues that our culture of self-censorship, policing each other’s language, cordoning off whole subjects as unsayable, is “almost the death knell of literary and other cultural production”. If we cannot tell the truth to one another, she says, literature is finished.
Explosive … the 2013 film of Half of a Yellow Sun.
Explosive … the 2013 film of Half of a Yellow Sun. Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy
“An American student once accosted me at a book reading,” Ngozi Adichie tells her audience. Why, the student asked angrily, had Ngozi Adichie said something in an interview? “I told her that what I had said was the truth and she agreed that it was – and then asked, ‘But why should we say it, even if it’s true?’ At first, I was astonished at the absurdity of the question, then I realised what she meant. It didn’t matter what I actually believed.”
It’s a magisterial sermon but slightly undermined, for me at least, by the fact that she keeps not saying what these things were that she wasn’t meant to say. How can you make an adjudication about who’s absurd, who’s policed, how we defend the freedom to say what’s true and important, if you don’t know what the thing is?
So the next day I ask her straight out: what was this true thing that the accosting American hadn’t wanted her to say? “Something,” she says. “I will leave it there.” I suspect it was something to do with trans issues, as Ngozi Adichie has gone viral on this subject before. Five years ago, the writer said in an interview: “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women.” She has written extensively about the fire she came under after that.
Ever since, she says, she has lost all respect for some people she would previously have gone for a drink with. There are invitations she is wary of accepting. “In Nigeria, I’m known to be controversial, right? And I’m controversial because I’m a feminist. Ask any Nigerian, you’ll meet the parents who say that I’ve made their daughters not want to get married, or say that I’m the reason that marriages have ended. And I’m very proud of that. It was one of those things I feel so strongly about that I wanted to make sure I talked about it. Now this whole trans thing, I did not know I was walking into anything. I thought I had said something self-evident. So I think I just experienced a sadness. I felt, ‘I’m on your side. We’re a tribe. Why am I a controversial figure?’”
This is the driving logic of her fear for free speech: that she can’t say biological sex is inalienable without sparking a storm. “So somebody who looks like my brother – he says, ‘I’m a woman’, and walks into the women’s bathroom, and a woman goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here’, and she’s transphobic?” We break briefly so I can look at a photo of her brother, who is smiling, tall, bearded and handsome. He’s actually on this trip with her; she has five siblings in all, two sisters, three brothers, all very close. I suggest that he would look different if he were living as a woman.
“But that’s the thing,” she says. “You can look however you want now and say you’re a woman.” And, she adds, anyone who might take issue with this is “outdated” and needs “to have the young people educate [them]”. I suspect she’s taking an argument – that trans people don’t want to be policed for how they dress and what stage of transition they’re at – and reducing it to the absurd. So I tack another way: “Imagine your brother did want to live as a woman. You would support his endeavour with love, right? You’d probably think treating him with dignity and respect was more important than where he went to the toilet?”
“But why is that?” she asks. “Why can’t they be equal parts of the conversation?”
“Maybe because dignity is more important?”
“Not if you consider women’s views to be valid. This is what baffles me. Are there no such things as objective truth and facts?”
I’m not having that. “You couldn’t objectively say, ‘All women are threatened by trans women.’ I’m also a woman. That doesn’t reflect my experience.”
“No, of course not. And it would not reflect the experience of many people. I think that’s different from saying, ‘Women’s rights are threatened by trans rights.’”
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I think the opposite is true – and since I’m in the oppressed category whose rights she’s wanting to protect, I think we have to file the matter under, at best, not-yet-settled. Then we drop it since, realistically, we could fight about this all day and she has a flight to catch.
The overarching mood of the era is one of “moral stridency”, Ngozi Adichie says in the lecture, which “is always punitive”. She elaborates: “Europe imports America’s cultural battles.” She has always been fascinated by our “resentful admiration. In some ways, America sets the standard of what we should be talking about and caring about. Europe should also take responsibility. And say, ‘You know what? No, thank you.’”
It’s all a question of perspective, I guess. I’m more interested in the deliberate export of culture war by rightwing thinktank networks; she’s more interested in liberals building better resilience to things that offend them. “It’s not to say that we have to accept everything. I’ve read many books that have really annoyed me.” I ask her to give me an example. “I won’t. But I’ve been annoyed by the portrayal of black people. I’ve been annoyed by the portrayal of Africans. That happens quite a bit. I’ve been annoyed by the portrayal of women. But for us to get to the world that we want, we have to start with the world as it is. To say that we want to cleanse a novel of misogyny is make-believe; the world is drenched in misogyny.”
Is that real, though? Are progressives trying to eradicate the literature of the less enlightened eras, or is that a rightwing caricature? “A friend of mine was telling me that there are actually now trigger warnings in novels. A book that he bought in Waterstones!” She worries, too, that orthodoxy can evolve in any direction; an author can become cancellable at any time. “Who’s to say that someone’s not going to say, ‘Cancel Americanah, it’s about Americans, and she’s culturally appropriating’?” It is the highest virtue to a novelist to say what they consider true, irrespective of whether it’s popular or fashionable or pretty.
Ngozi Adichie worries about creeping authoritarianism, about rightwing populism, about fake news and about democracy failing. These are exactly the same things that those she sees as the enemies of free speech worry about. If I think the free speech debate is being puppeted by the right to destroy the unity of the left, she probably thinks I’m someone else’s useful idiot. But in combat, as she is in her prose, she’s exhilarating and I’m glad we had the conversation. The paradox of her Reith Lecture, as in the free speech debate generally, is all the things it doesn’t say.
‘An epidemic of self-censorship’
An extract from the writer’s Reith lecture
We now live in broad settled ideological tribes. We no longer need to have real discussions because our positions are already assumed, based on our tribal affiliation. Our tribes demand from us a devotion to orthodoxy and they abide not reason, but faith. Many young people are growing up in this cauldron afraid to ask questions for fear of asking the wrong questions. And so, they practise an exquisite kind of self-censorship. Even if they believe something to be true or important, they do not say so because they should not say so.
One cannot help but wonder in this epidemic of self-censorship, what are we losing and what have we lost? We are all familiar with stories of people who have said or written something and then, faced a terrible online backlash. There is a difference between valid criticism, which should be part of free expression, and this kind of backlash, ugly personal insults, putting addresses of homes and children’s schools online, trying to make people lose their jobs.
To anyone who thinks, “Well, some people who have said terrible things, deserve it,” no. Nobody deserves it. It is unconscionable barbarism. It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking. There is something honest about an authoritarianism that recognises itself to be what it is. Such a system is easier to challenge because the battle lines are clear. But this new social censure demands consensus while being wilfully blind to its own tyranny. I think it portends the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity.
No human endeavour requires freedom as much as creativity does. To create, one needs a kind of formless roving of the mind, to go nowhere and anywhere and everywhere. It is from that swell that art emerges. The German writer, Gunter Grass, once reflected on his writing process with these words: “The barriers fell, language surged forward, memory, imagination, the pleasure of invention.” As a writer, I recognised this intimately. As a reader, I have often felt the magic of literature, that sudden internal shiver while reading a novel, that glorious shock of mutuality, a sense of wonder that a stranger’s words could make me feel less alone in the world.
Literature shows us who we are, takes us into history, tells us not just what happened but how it felt and teaches us, as an American professor once put it, about things that are “not googleable.” Books shape our understanding of the world. We speak of “Dickensian London.” We look to great African writers like Aidoo and Ngugi to understand the continent and we read Balzac for the subtleties of post-Napoleonic France.
Literature deeply matters and I believe literature is in peril because of social censure. If nothing changes, the next generation will read us and wonder, how did they manage to stop being human? How were they so lacking in contradiction and complexity? How did they banish all their shadows?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Author warns about 'epidemic of self-censorship'
Published
30 November 2022
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Image caption,
The writer said some people want "to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking"
Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has said she worries society is suffering from an "epidemic of self-censorship".
In a BBC lecture on freedom of speech, the writer said young people were growing up "afraid to ask questions for fear of asking the wrong questions".
Such a climate could lead to "the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity", the award-winning Nigerian author warned.
"No human endeavour requires freedom as much as creativity does," she added.
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Adichie, known for novels including Half Of A Yellow Sun and Americanah, was speaking in the first of the four annual Reith Lectures for Radio 4, all this year on themes of freedom.
She argued that Sir Salman Rushdie's controversial novel The Satanic Verses would "probably not" be published today - something he himself said in 2012.
Earlier this year, Sir Salman was attacked on stage at a literary event. He suffered a damaged liver, severed nerves in an arm and lost sight in an eye.
Sir Salman Rushdie pictured onstage
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
Image caption,
The novelist was forced into hiding for nearly 10 years after his 1988 book was published
The Satanic Verses, Sir Salman's fourth novel, led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s. Some Muslims regard the book as blasphemous.
"Would Rushdie's novel be published today? Probably not," Adichie said. "Would it even be written? Possibly not."
She said literature was increasingly viewed "through ideological rather than artistic lenses".
She continued: "Nothing demonstrates this better than the recent phenomenon of 'sensitivity readers' in the world of publishing, people whose job it is to cleanse unpublished manuscripts of potentially offensive words.
"This, in my mind, negates the very idea of literature."
If any of the books that had "formed and inspired and consoled" her had been censored, "I would perhaps today be lost", she said.
The 45-year-old also expressed concern that some people don't speak up for fear of vicious criticism or becoming the latest target of cancel culture.
Media caption,
Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks to BBC 100 Women
"We are all familiar with stories of people who have said or written something and then faced a terrible online backlash," she said.
"There is a difference between valid criticism, which should be part of free expression, and this kind of backlash, ugly personal insults, putting addresses of homes and children's schools online, trying to make people lose their jobs.
"To anyone who thinks, well, some people who have said terrible things deserve it - no. Nobody deserves it. It is unconscionable barbarism. It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken, but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking."
Media caption,
BBC Newsnight: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks to Kirsty Wark
In 2020, Adichie's 2006 novel Half Of A Yellow Sun was voted the best book to have won the Women's Prize for Fiction in its 25-year history.
In the other Reith Lectures, former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Rowan Williams will explore freedom of worship; Dr Fiona Hill, former White House adviser to the President on Russia, will talk about freedom from fear; and author and musician Darren McGarvey will discuss freedom from want.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Reith Lecture is on BBC Sounds and BBC iPlayer. The other Reith Lectures will also be on Radio 4 on Wednesdays at 09:00 GMT.
In Nigeria, a Laid-Back Dinner Party With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The writer hosted a dozen creative guests for jollof rice and Nigerian finger foods at her home in Lagos.
Interview by Laura May ToddPhotographs by Rachel Seidu
Dec. 1, 2022
It’s tradition in Igbo culture to present your guests with an anyara, also known as a garden egg. It’s a small vegetable, similar to an eggplant, that you usually eat with spicy peanut butter before anything else — people say it’s a blessing. I love to celebrate these old traditions, so I presented each person with an anyara, which was my way of saying “welcome.”
A few guests were late, as often happens in Lagos. So we hung around for a bit, having drinks. This is a circle of people who, even if they don’t know one another well, they’re familiar with one another’s work. When everybody arrived, I went around the table doing introductions. I call these “what I love about you” moments. For example: Phyno is one of the most original musicians in Africa. Chigul is an incredible comedian. Ifeyinwa [Azubike] is a fantastic fashion designer. I believe in giving people their flowers in public.
These evenings often end with us in the living room. People sprawl out on the sofa. Somebody falls asleep. There’s something about us Africans where there’s a willingness to be flexible with rules, especially when it comes to eating. People perch with plates on their laps and their wineglasses on the floor — or whatever bit of space they find. At one point, we were having a conversation about what the difference is between a glass for red wine and a glass for white wine. My position was, “Who cares?” What matters is that you bring your calm, authentic self to the table.
Image
From left: Osas Ighodaro, Chigul, Phyno, Adichie, Victor Ehikhamenor and Obi-Uchendu.
From left: Osas Ighodaro, Chigul, Phyno, Adichie, Victor Ehikhamenor and Obi-Uchendu.Credit...Rachel Seidu
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The attendees: In addition to the rapper Chibuzor Nelson Azubuike, a.k.a. Phyno, 36; the comedian Chioma Omeruah, a.k.a. Chigul, 46; and the fashion designer Ifeyinwa Azubike, 40, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 45, was joined in her home by the writer and visual artist Victor Ehikhamenor, 52; the actor Osas Ighodaro, 32; the TV presenter Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, 40; the music producer Chinaku Onyemelukwe, 57; the interior designer Ezinne Akudo Anyaoha, 32; the podcaster Jola Ayeye, 30; the writer Eghosa Imasuen, 46; and Adichie’s cousin the public servant Oge Ikemelu, 35.
The food: Adichie’s chef, Daniel Loko, prepared peppery grilled catfish, fried plantains, creamy plantain porridge with dried fish and traditional jollof rice, along with Adichie’s rendition, which swaps in quinoa. For pre-dinner snacks, there were plates of small chops — Nigerian finger foods such as samosas and deep-fried dough balls called puff puffs. For drinks there was pinot noir, sparkling white wine, beer, whiskey and Dala, a sweet Nigerian liqueur made with star apple.
The music: Songs by the Cavemen, Tems, Burna Boy and party guest Phyno were included in the mix.
The conversation: The attendees talked about TV series they were watching. “They made fun of me when I said I like Scandinavian noir,” says Adichie. “They told me, ‘Ooh, fancy.’” (The rest of the guests, she says, were partial to “Succession” [2018-present], though she hasn’t yet seen it.) Obi-Uchendu, who hosts the Nigerian iteration of the reality TV show “Big Brother,” told the group about an upcoming mash-up with the South African version, which they all agreed would be dramatic.
Favorite party game: “I force everyone to reveal a secret about themselves,” says Adichie. “And invariably I want it to be about their sex lives. It doesn’t always work. Usually, the first person says, ‘Oh, no, come on.’ Then the second person says, ‘Well, I did this once. ...’ And suddenly everyone’s laughing.”
Novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Goes Anti-Trans Again
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The acclaimed author is painting transgender rights as a threat to women's rights.
BY TRUDY RING
DECEMBER 02 2022 6:06 PM EST
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Acclaimed novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is once again voicing anti-transgender views.
Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian who lives part of the time in the U.S., went into trans issues in a recent interview with The Guardian in conjunction with her delivery of a Reith Lecture for the BBC. She received much criticism for a remark she made five years ago — “When people talk about, ‘Are trans women women?’ my feeling is trans women are trans women” — and has written about it a great deal.
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In her Reith Lecture, she denounced self-censorship and recounted a conversation with an American at a book reading, with the American advising her that certain things should remain unsaid even if they’re true. She did not reveal what comment spurred the conversation, so Guardian interviewer Zoe Williams asked if it dealt with trans issues.
Ngozi Adichie did not answer directly, but remarking on the criticism of her generally, she said, “Now this whole trans thing, I did not know I was walking into anything. I thought I had said something self-evident. So I think I just experienced a sadness. I felt, ‘I’m on your side. We’re a tribe. Why am I a controversial figure?’”
“So somebody who looks like my brother — he says, ‘I’m a woman,’ and walks into the women’s bathroom, and a woman goes, ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ and she’s transphobic?” she continued.
The brother in question is “tall, bearded and handsome,” Williams wrote, adding, “I suggest that he would look different if he were living as a woman.” Ngozi Adichie responded, “But that’s the thing. You can look however you want now and say you’re a woman.”
Williams noted that trans people don’t want to be judged or discriminated against based on their appearance and stage of transition, and she asked if Ngozi Adichie’s brother were transitioning, wouldn’t she think that “treating him with dignity and respect was more important than where he went to the toilet?”
“Why can’t they be equal parts of the conversation?” Ngozi Adichie replied. When Williams suggested that dignity should take precedence, Ngozi Adichie said that amounted to ignoring women’s views. Williams pointed out that not all women consider trans people a threat. Ngozi Adichie responded, “No, of course not. And it would not reflect the experience of many people. I think that’s different from saying, ‘Women’s rights are threatened by trans rights.’”
That last is questionable at best, but the two dropped the subject there. “Ngozi Adichie worries about creeping authoritarianism, about rightwing populism, about fake news and about democracy failing,” Williams concluded. “These are exactly the same things that those she sees as the enemies of free speech worry about. If I think the free speech debate is being puppeted by the right to destroy the unity of the left, she probably thinks I’m someone else’s useful idiot.” Nonetheless, the conversation with Ngozi Adichie was “exhilarating,” the journalist wrote.
Ngozi Adichie’s novels include Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and Americanah.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reading at 2013 Fall for the Book
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reading at 2013 Fall for the Book
Born 15 September 1977 (age 45)
Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria
Pen name Amanda N. Adichie
Occupation Novelist, short story writer, non-fiction writer
Nationality Nigerian
American
Alma mater Eastern Connecticut State University (BA)
Johns Hopkins University (MA)
Yale University (MA)
Period 2003–present
Notable works Purple Hibiscus (2003)
Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
Americanah (2013)
We Should All Be Feminists (2014)
Notable awards
MacArthur Fellowship (2008)
International Nonino Prize (2009)
PEN Pinter Prize (2018)
Spouse Ivara Esege (m. 2009)[1]
Children 1
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's voice
0:38
from the BBC programme Front Row, 3 May 2013.[2]
Website
www.chimamanda.com
6:03
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about The Thing Around Your Neck on Bookbits radio
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie // (listen) (/ˌtʃɪmɑːˈmɑːndə əŋˈɡoʊzi əˈdiːtʃeɪ/ CHIM-ah-MAHN-də əng-GOH-zee ə-DEE-chay;[note 1] born 15 September 1977)[3][4] is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction.[5] She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature",[6] particularly in her second home, the United States.
Adichie has written the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014).[7] Her most recent books are Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017), Zikora (2020) and Notes on Grief (2021).[8]
In 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.[9][4] She was the recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize in 2018.[10] She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.[11]
Contents
1 Early life and family
2 Education
3 Writing career
3.1 Influences
4 Lectures
4.1 "The Danger of a Single Story"
4.2 "We should all be feminists"
4.2.1 Sampling in "Flawless"
4.3 "Connecting Cultures"
4.4 "Freedom of speech"
5 Views
5.1 Feminism
5.2 Religion
5.3 LGBT rights
6 Personal life
7 Awards and recognition
7.1 Other recognition
8 Bibliography
8.1 Books
8.2 Short fiction
9 See also
10 References
10.1 Notes
10.2 Citations
11 Further reading
12 External links
Early life and family
Adichie was born in the city of Enugu in Nigeria, the fifth of six children in an Igbo family. She was raised in the university town of Nsukka in Enugu State.[12][4] While she was growing up, her father, James Nwoye Adichie (1932–2020),[13] worked as a professor of statistics at the University of Nigeria. Her mother, Grace Ifeoma (1942–2021),[14] was the university's first female registrar.[15] They lived in a house on campus previously occupied by Chinua Achebe.[16][17] The family lost almost everything during the Nigerian Civil War, including both her maternal and paternal grandfathers.[18] Her family's ancestral village is Abba in Anambra State.[3][19]
Education
Adichie completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria Secondary School, Nsukka, where she received several academic prizes.[17] She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the university's Catholic medical students.[20]
At the age of 19, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[21] She transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) to be near her sister Uche,[22] who had a medical practice in Coventry, Connecticut. She received a bachelor's degree from ECSU,[23] summa cum laude, in 2001.[24]
In 2003, Adichie completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.[25] Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005–2006 academic year.[26] In 2008, she received a Master of Arts degree in African studies from Yale University.[27] Also in 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.[9] She was awarded a 2011–2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.[24]
Adichie has been awarded sixteen honorary doctorate degrees from universities including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Catholic University of Louvain, where she received her sixteenth in a ceremony on 28 April 2022.[28]
Writing career
Adichie published a collection of poems in 1997 (Decisions) and a play (For Love of Biafra) in 1998, using the name Amanda N. Adichie.[29][30] Her short story "My Mother, the Crazy African", dating from when Adichie was a college senior living in Connecticut, discusses the problems that arise when a person is facing two cultures that are complete opposites from each other. On one hand, there is a traditional Nigerian culture with clear gender roles, while in America there is more freedom in how genders act, and fewer restrictions on younger people. Ralindu, the protagonist, faces this challenge with her parents as she grew up in Philadelphia, while they grew up in Nigeria. Adichie dives deep into gender roles and traditions and what problems can occur because of this.[31][better source needed][relevant? – discuss]
Adichie also published stories in Zoetrope: All-Story,[32] and Topic Magazine.[33]
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003), received widespread critical acclaim; it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004)[34][35] and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005).[36]
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), named after the flag of the short-lived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Nigerian Civil War.[37] Adichie's own grandfather died in a refugee camp during the war and she has said that she wrote the book as a tribute to him.[16] Adichie has said of Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra (1982): "[It] was very important for my research when I was writing Half of a Yellow Sun."[38] Half of a Yellow Sun received the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction[39] and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.[40] Half of a Yellow Sun was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele, starring BAFTA award-winner and Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA winner Thandiwe Newton, and was released in 2014.[41] In November 2020, Half of a Yellow Sun was voted by the public to be the best book to have won the Women's Prize for Fiction in its 25-year history.[42]
Adichie's third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of 12 stories that explore the relationships between men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.[43]
Adichie's story "Ceiling" was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories.[44][45]
Her third novel Americanah (2013), an exploration of a young Nigerian encountering race in America was selected by The New York Times as one of "The 10 Best Books of 2013".[46] As a youth in Nigeria, Adichie was not accustomed to being identified by the colour of her skin, which only began to happen when she arrived in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was confronted with what it meant to be a person of colour in the United States. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn.[47] She then wrote about this experience through this novel.[48] The book went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award[49] and was picked as the winner for the 2017 "One Book, One New York" program,[50][51][52] part of a community reading initiative encouraging all city residents to read the same book.[53]
In 2015, she was co-curator of the PEN World Voices Festival.[54]
Her next book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, published in March 2017,[55] had its origins in a letter Adichie wrote to a friend who had asked for advice about how to raise her daughter as a feminist.[56]
In 2020, Adichie published Zikora, a stand-alone short story about sexism and single motherhood.[57]
In May 2021, Adichie released a memoir based on her father's death titled Notes on Grief,[58] based on an essay of the same title published in The New Yorker in September 2020.[59] As described by the reviewer for The Independent, "Her words put a welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided."[60]
When history professor Toyin Falola was interviewed, he spoke about some Nigerian figures whom he believes have been recognised prematurely for their achievements. In his argument, he cites several Nigerian academics who are rightly what he calls "intellectual heroes". His list includes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chinua Achebe, Teslim Elias, Babatunde Fafunwa, Simeon Adebo, Bala Usman, Eni Njoku, Ayodele Awojobi and Bolanle Awe.[61]
Influences
Ngozi Adichie's original and initial inspiration came from Chinua Achebe, after reading his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart at the age of 10;[62] Adichie has said that she realized that people who looked like herself could "live in books" while reading Achebe's novels.[17] She has also named Buchi Emecheta as a Nigerian literary inspiration, upon whose death Adichie said: "Buchi Emecheta. We are able to speak because you first spoke. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your art Nodu na ndokwa."[63][64] Other books Adichie has cited as having been important in her reading include Camara Laye's The African Child and the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby.[65]
Lectures
"The Danger of a Single Story"
Adichie delivered a talk titled "The Danger of a Single Story" for TED in 2009.[66] It has become one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time, having amassed over 27 million views.[67] In the talk she expressed her concern for under-representation of various cultures.[68] She explained that as a young child, she had often read American and British stories where the characters were primarily of Caucasian origin. At the lecture, she said that the under-representation of cultural differences could be dangerous.[68] Adichie concluded the lecture by noting the significance of different stories in various cultures and the representation that they deserve. She advocated for a greater understanding of stories because people are complex, saying that by understanding only a single story, one misinterprets people, their backgrounds, and their histories.[69] Since 2009, she revisited the topic when speaking to audiences such as the Hilton Humanitarian Symposium of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 2019.[70]
"We should all be feminists"
In 2012, Adichie gave a TEDx talk entitled: "We should all be feminists", delivered at TedXEuston in London, which has been viewed more than five million times[71] and was later published as a book in 2014 by Fourth Estate titled We Should All Be Feminists. The book has reportedly sold 750,000 copies in the U.S. alone.[55] She shared her experiences of being an African feminist, and her views on gender construction and sexuality. Adichie said that the problem with gender is that it shapes who we are.[71] She also said: "I am angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change, but in addition to being angry, I'm also hopeful because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to make and remake themselves for the better."[72] On 8 December 2021, Adichie was interviewed by BBC News about the responsibility of being a feminist icon; she stated that she did not want another person to define her responsibility and she rather defined her responsibility for herself but did not mind using her platform to speak up for someone else. She also spoke about the right of women to be angry, because anger propels action.[73]
Sampling in "Flawless"
Parts of Adichie's TEDx talk were sampled in Beyoncé's song "Flawless" in December 2013.[74]
When asked in an NPR interview for her reaction to Beyoncé sampling her talk, Adichie said that "anything that gets young people talking about feminism is a very good thing".[15] She later qualified the statement in an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant: "Another thing I hated was that I read everywhere: now people finally know her, thanks to Beyoncé, or: she must be very grateful. I found that disappointing. I thought: I am a writer and I have been for some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me: 'Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again.' That's why I didn't speak about it much."[75]
Adichie has clarified that her particular feminism differs from Beyoncé's, particularly in their disagreements about the role occupied by men in women's lives, saying: "Her style is not my style but I do find it interesting that she takes a stand in political and social issues since a few years. She portrays a woman who is in charge of her own destiny, who does her own thing, and she has girl power. I am very taken with that."[75] Nevertheless, Adichie has been outspoken against critics who question the singer's credentials as a feminist, and has said: "Whoever says they're feminist is bloody feminist."[76]
"Connecting Cultures"
On 15 March 2012, Adichie delivered the Commonwealth Lecture 2012 at the Guildhall, London, addressing the theme "Connecting Cultures" and explaining: "Realistic fiction is not merely the recording of the real, as it were, it is more than that, it seeks to infuse the real with meaning. As events unfold, we do not always know what they mean. But in telling the story of what happened, meaning emerges and we are able to make connections with emotive significance."[36][77]
"Freedom of speech"
On 30 November 2022, Adichie delivered the first of the BBC's 2022 Reith Lectures inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech.[78][79]
Views
Feminism
In a 2014 interview, Adichie said on feminism and writing: "I think of myself as a storyteller but I would not mind at all if someone were to think of me as a feminist writer ... I'm very feminist in the way I look at the world, and that world view must somehow be part of my work."[49]
Religion
Adichie is a Catholic and was raised Catholic as a child, though she considers her views, especially those on feminism, to sometimes conflict with her religion. At a 2017 event at Georgetown University, she stated that religion "is not a women-friendly institution" and "has been used to justify oppressions that are based on the idea that women are not equal human beings".[80] She has called for Christian and Muslim leaders in Nigeria to preach messages of peace and togetherness.[81] Having previously identified as agnostic while raising her daughter Catholic, she has also identified as culturally Catholic. In a 2021 Humboldt Forum, she stated that she had returned to her Catholic faith.[82]
LGBT rights
Adichie supports LGBT rights in Africa; in 2014, when Nigeria passed an anti-homosexuality bill, she was among the Nigerian writers who objected to the law, calling it unconstitutional and "a strange priority to a country with so many real problems", stating that a crime is a crime for a reason because a crime has victims, and that since consensual homosexual conduct between adults does not constitute a crime, the law is unjust.[83] Adichie was also close friends with Kenyan openly gay writer Binyavanga Wainaina,[84] and when he died on 21 May 2019 after suffering a stroke in Nairobi, Adichie said in her tribute that she was struggling to stop crying.[85]
Since 2017, Adichie has been repeatedly accused of transphobia, initially for saying that "my feeling is trans women are trans women" in response to the question "Are trans women women?"[86][56] Adichie later clarified her statement, writing: "[p]erhaps I should have said trans women are trans women and cis women are cis women and all are women. Except that 'cis' is not an organic part of my vocabulary. And would probably not be understood by a majority of people. Because saying 'trans' and 'cis' acknowledges that there is a distinction between women born female and women who transition, without elevating one or the other, which was my point. I have and will continue to stand up for the rights of transgender people."[87]
In 2020, Adichie weighed into "all the noise" sparked by J. K. Rowling's article titled "J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues",[88] and called the essay "perfectly reasonable".[89] Adichie again faced accusations of transphobia, some of which came from Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi, who had graduated from Adichie's writing workshop.[90] In response to the backlash, Adichie criticised cancel culture, saying: "There's a sense in which you aren't allowed to learn and grow. Also forgiveness is out of the question. I find it so lacking in compassion."[88]
In a June 2021 essay titled "It Is Obscene", Adichie again criticised cancel culture, discussing her experiences with two unnamed writers who attended her writing workshop and later lambasted her on social media over comments she made about transgender people. She labelled what she called their "passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship" as "obscene".[91][92]
Personal life
In 2009, Adichie married Ivara Esege, a Nigerian doctor.[3][93] They have one daughter, who was born in 2016.[94]
Adichie divides her time between the United States and Nigeria, where she teaches writing workshops.[95][1]
Awards and recognition
In 2002, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing[96][97] for her short story "You in America",[98][99][100] and her story "That Harmattan Morning" was selected as a joint winner of the 2002 BBC World Service Short Story Awards.[101] In 2003, she won the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award).[102]
In 2010 she was listed among the authors of The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" Fiction Issue.[103] In April 2014, she was named as one of 39 writers aged under 40[104] in the Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club project Africa39, celebrating Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014.[105][106] In April 2017, it was announced that Adichie had been elected, as one of 228 new members to ube inducted on 7 October 2017,into the 237th class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; this was one of the highest honours for intellectuals in the United States.[107][108]
Adichie holds 16 honorary doctorate degrees from universities including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Catholic University of Louvain.[28] In 2016, she was conferred with an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, by Johns Hopkins University.[109][110] In 2017, she was conferred an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, by Haverford College[111] and The University of Edinburgh.[112] In 2018, she received an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, from Amherst College.[113] She received an honorary degree, doctor honoris causa, from the Université de Fribourg, Switzerland, in 2019.[114] On 20 May 2019, Ngozi Adichie received an honorary degree from Yale University.[115] On 28 April 2022, she received her 16th honorary doctorate degree from the Catholic University of Louvain.[28]
Adichie on the cover of Ms. in 2014
On 13 October 2022, a member of Adichie ’s communications team told the Nigerian newspaper The Guardian that she rejected an award that was to be given to her by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari: "The author did not accept the award and, as such, did not attend the ceremony."[116] On 30 December 2022, Adichie was made the Odeluwa of Abba, a Nigerian chief, by the kingdom of Abba in her native Anambra State. She was the first woman to receive such an honour from the kingdom.[117]
Year Award Work Result
2002 Caine Prize for African Writing[96] "You in America" Nominated[A]
Commonwealth Short Story Competition "The Tree in Grandma's Garden" Nominated[B]
BBCmeasuring Competition "That Harmattan Morning" Won[C]
2002/2003 David T. Wong International Short Story Prize (PEN American Center Award) "Half of a Yellow Sun" Won
2003 O. Henry Prize "The American Embassy" Won
2004 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award: Best Debut Fiction Category Purple Hibiscus Won
Orange Prize Nominated[A]
Booker Prize Nominated[D]
Young Adult Library Services Association Best Books for Young Adults Award Nominated
2004/2005 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Nominated[A]
2005 Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best First Book (Africa) Won
Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best First Book (overall) Won
2006 National Book Critics Circle Award Half of a Yellow Sun Nominated
2007 British Book Awards: "Richard & Judy Best Read of the Year" category Nominated
James Tait Black Memorial Prize Nominated
Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book (Africa) Nominated[A]
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award: Fiction category Won[C]
PEN Beyond Margins Award Won[C]
Orange Broadband Prize: Fiction category Won
2008 International Dublin Literary Award Nominated
Reader's Digest Author of the Year Award Won
Future Award, Nigeria: Young Person of the Year category[118] Won
MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant[119] Won
2009 International Nonino Prize[120] Won
Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award The Thing Around Your Neck Nominated[D]
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Nominated[A]
2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book (Africa) Nominated[A]
Dayton Literary Peace Prize Nominated[B]
2011 This Day Awards: "New Champions for an Enduring Culture" category Nominated
2013 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize: Fiction category Americanah Won
National Book Critics Circle Award: Fiction category[121][122] Won
2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction[123] Nominated[A]
Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction[124] Nominated[A]
MTV Africa Music Awards 2014: Personality of the Year[125] Nominated
2015 International Dublin Literary Award[126][127] Americanah Nominated[A]
Grammy Awards: Album of the Year[128] Beyoncé (as featured artist) Nominated
2018 PEN Pinter Prize[129][130] Won
A^ Shortlisted
B^ Runner-up
C^ Joint win
D^ Longlisted
Other recognition
2010 Listed among The New Yorker's "20 Under 40"
2013 Listed among The New York Times' "Ten Best Books of 2013", for Americanah[131]
2013 Listed among the BBC's "Top Ten Books of 2013", for Americanah[132]
2013 Foreign Policy magazine "Top Global Thinkers of 2013"[133]
2013 Listed among the New African's "100 Most Influential Africans 2013"
2014 Listed among Africa39 project of 39 writers aged under 40[134]
2015 Listed among Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People"[135]
2015 Commencement Speaker at Wellesley College[136]
2017 Commencement Speaker at Williams College[137]
2018 Class Day Speaker for Harvard University.[138]
2019 Class Day Speaker for Yale University.[139]
Adichie was one of 15 women selected to appear on the cover of the September 2019 issue of British Vogue, guest-edited by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.[140]
Adichie was cited as one of the Top 100 most influential Africans by New African magazine in 2019.[141]
Chimamanda was also elected in March 2017 into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. This made her the second Nigerian to be given such an honour, after Prof. Wole Soyinka. She was listed among the 40 Honorary members from 19 countries.[142]
Bibliography
Books
Year Title Publisher ISBN Notes
1997 Decisions Minerva Press (London) ISBN 9781861064226 Poetry
1998 For Love of Biafra Spectrum Books (Ibadan) ISBN 9789780290320 Play
2003 Purple Hibiscus 4th Estate (London) ISBN 9780007189885 Novel
2006 Half of a Yellow Sun 4th Estate (London) ISBN 9780007200283 Novel
2009 The Thing Around Your Neck 4th Estate (London) ISBN 9780007306213 Short story collection
2013 Americanah Alfred A. Knopf (New York) ISBN 9780307271082 Novel
2014 We Should All Be Feminists 4th Estate (London) ISBN 9780008115272 Essay (excerpt in New Daughters of Africa, ed. Margaret Busby, 2019)[143]
2017 Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions 4th Estate (London) ISBN 9780008275709 Essay
2019 Sierra Leone, 1997 Black Ballon, an imprint of Catapult ISBN 9781936787791 Story in the book Eat Joy - Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers, collected by Natalie Eve Garrett
2021 Notes on Grief 4th Estate (London) ISBN 9780593320808 Memoir
Short fiction
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (June 2015)
Year Title First published
2007 "Cell One" "Cell One". The New Yorker'. . 22 January 2007.
2008 "The Headstrong Historian" "The Headstrong Historian."The New Yorker. 16 June 2008.
2008 "A Private Experience" "A Private Experience: A short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie". the Guardian. 28 December 2008.
2010 "Birdsong" "Birdsong".The New Yorker. 20 September 2010.
2013 "Checking Out" "Checking out". The New Yorker. Vol. 89, no. 5. 18 March 2013. pp. 66–73.
2015 "Olikoye" "Olikoye". Matter. 19 January 2015.
2015 "Apollo" "Apollo". The New Yorker. Vol. 91, no. 8. 13 April 2015. pp. 64–69.
2016 "The Arrangements: A Work of Fiction" "'The Arrangements': A Work of Short Fiction". The New York Times Book Review. 3 July 2016.
2020 "Notes on Grief" "Notes on Grief". The New Yorker. 10 September 2020 - personal essay
2020 "Zikora" Amazon Original Stories[57]
Of This Our Country
Edited by Nancy Adimora and Ore Agbaje-Williams. Published by the Borough press.
Review.
I turn to books to learn, to engage, to enjoy. Sometimes to be better informed, other times to divert myself away from things I wish were not there in either history or the present. I turn to Of This Our Country. I am blessed with many Nigerian friends and contacts. I want to learn more about Nigeria. To read what Nigerians have to say about themselves – the things they want to write about most in this new anthology about their country.
But there’s a hitch. The trouble for me in reading this book is that in almost every chapter I am reminded that I come from a country that has caused such suffering in so many others throughout history. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said, “there are very few parts of the world where the British have not meddled.”
J K Chukwu puts it even more bluntly in her chapter. She slams white supremacy, white terrorism and colonialism. I have to tick the ‘white British’ box on forms, but none of this is me. This was not my fault. But this is my problem. How to deal with my country’s past, and present, in so many domains. How can I not despair at my collective sense of guilt for Britain’s wrongdoings? My share of history and its consequences. I condemn the British Government then and now, so full of greed, hatred and prejudice. I despise the interloper of a prime minister who once claimed that “the problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more.” Odious beyond belief. Britain is not my country.
And yet, I must not dwell on Britain. This book is not about me. The focus in this book is on Nigeria. Of this their country. The thoughts of twenty-four Nigerian writers, lovingly commissioned and edited by Nancy Adimora and Ore Agbaje-Williams.
Of This Our Country is an extensive collection of stories, personal histories, anecdotes, thoughts and opinions, connected by a rich cultural thread and a shared sense of identity. The collection presents great variety and unique perspectives. There are upwards of five hundred ethnicities and languages in Nigeria. So many peoples and regions in such a vast land. And by the way, we are continually reminded, Nigeria was a land before it became a country; the country being a false construct by the British. So there is plenty to surprise us, and much we have to unlearn first in order to discover the truth.
Contrasts come to the fore. The writers bring us a mixture of celebration and complaints, usually in conflict within their own contributions. Self-aggrandisement and self-deprecation. Hope and disappointment. Political insight and personal reflections. Wisdom and caution, with occasional moments of abandon. Celebrations and partying to the max.
So many subjects are covered. Weddings, fashion, markets, pidgin English, food, class, education, wealth disparity, social division, servants, literary festivals, Lagos, car crime, religions, local chiefs, Babalawos and yes, condemnation of colonialism.
All the essays command attention and come together in an impressive volume. Here I offer some thoughts on my favourite pieces. The selection process was hard. I enjoyed and learnt from all the chapters.
The anthology opens with Clarion Calls by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, summoning memories of her youthful three weeks of national service after graduating. Education comes up frequently in this book, generally associated with a sense of restriction, harsh treatment and the small mindedness of those in authority. Plus the wrong language taught, the wrong flag saluted and here, getting the words wrong to one of several national anthems. Ayọ̀bámi has disturbing memories of insanitary conditions and the threat of physical violence in a hostile setting. There is camaraderie, but otherwise not too much joy.
Later in the collection, Lola Shoneyin recalls her own period of compulsory youth service, in Nostalgia is an Extreme Sport. This jostles for position with memories of her early days as a popstar, a stressful journey across Nigeria, and heightened spirituality in the Celestial Church. Lola treasures unexpected acts of kindness from strangers. But this is a hazy, mixed bag and Lola links her failing memory with memories of a Nigeria she wants to forget. There is a massive duality running throughout the anthology, juxtaposing fondness and regret, hope and bemusement.
Inua Ellams presents both a memoir and a story in A Brief History of Suya. This is a beautiful, dual strand piece within the same ten pages that all contributors are accorded. His tale of two young male thieves gorging on stolen goat meat, falling asleep and being woken by an empowered young female with a knife in her hand, is magical and delightful. His alternating, factual account of being attacked by a huge chunk of heavily spiced beef, biting back, is great fun. Full of swagger and spices. Revelling in mystique and reality, Inua tells us: “Nigeria has always been magical to me, a concept more than a country”.
Next, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Still Becoming reads a bit like a Lonely Planet tour guide on Lagos. I note this is the only piece previously published, in Esquire magazine in 2019. Chimamanda has opened up African literature and Nigeria for me more than any other writer. Her essay here is certainly informative, but I was hoping for something a bit more captivating and visceral, to stir the imagination a little more. I know I am judging Chimamanda harshly, but much is expected from those who have such supreme talent.
Oyinkan Akande is buoyant in Elephants and Giraffes, with a celebration of Yoruba wedding ceremonies and partying. The Nigerian capacity to live life to the full and to make the most of special occasions is enormous. It has to be. Everyday life can simply be unbearable at times. Exciting highs and dismal failures compete. But that’s not exclusively Nigerian. Still, Oyinkan has mixed feelings about Nigerian contradictions, saying:
“Understand I recognise our folly as a people. Understand, also, that I am proud of it too.”
And then we come back to J.K. Chukwu, with Against Enough. This is the most political and the most hard hitting so far. J.K. denounces colonialists, their methods and the consequences of their actions. She bewails the violence and the unravelling of society, caused by an outsider’s policy of divide and conquer. The role of the British. On a more personal level, J.K is striving to figure out how to be ‘enough’, despite all that history and the damage it is still causing today.
In Rites of Passage, Anietie Isoing describes his journey home to attend a funeral. Local burial ceremonies and customs are an essential part of life and self-learning. To his surprise, Anietie comes to value the people who gather round him, bringing warmth and comfort, speaking the same language. There is a wonderful sense of community spirit and shared identity at this difficult time recalled by Anietie.
Chika Unigwe concentrates on a series of physical sensations and emotional bonds in her life in Amaechina. In her memoirs Chika drinks chocolate milk and later sips palm wine. She plays Abba music and visits the zoo. Enugu is her home, but Osumenyi is a place of special spiritual significance. Here, she visits her grandparents for Christmas. Osumenyi is where her family’s “figurative umbilical cords are buried”. Later, in Nsukka, Chikwa experiences her first kiss and encounters her Belgian husband to be. These are just some highlights; there is so much more to discover. Chika ends with an expression of hope for better days for Nigeria, a common prayer in this collection.
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim starts with a question in One Season, Many Decades:
“How could a dream of a country like this go so wrong?”
He comes up with the answer instantly:
“The birth of this contraption that is my country was a product of the business interest of the British.”
This word ‘contraption’ is simultaneously clunky and perfect. It will come up again. I’m increasingly realising that all of these fine writers, these interesting and creative people, have every right to hate the country that I have to call my own. It may be that some things can never truly go away.
Abubakar writes about the fighting and division between Christians and Muslims caused by the devastating establishment of an artificial nation. This has happened in many places in the world throughout history, but knowing this does not help.
He writes about squashed tomatoes leading to death in the marketplace. And kidnapping and murder. And yet somehow, culture, artistry, and humour thrive and help make life worth living, despite the harsh realities. Abubakar continues:
“We deconstruct our realities…The bizarre, the fantastical and magical, the tragic, the exhilarating and titillating, and cobble them back together in ways that would make it tolerable, beautiful even, sometimes even incandescent.”
Herein lies an essential role for a writer. Creativity makes life bearable, if not completely free of hardship. But still, Abubakar feels abused, by the government, by corruption and crime of all kinds. I think of similarities with my own country. Corruption is not confined to Nigeria, though it seems to take place behind the curtain in the UK, and the outcome is less overtly brutal.
Okey Ndibe offers us War and Peace. A touch of genius within ten pages. Okey builds on the contradictions again:
“Nigeria is quite simply the place where I feel happiest. It is also, in a strange twist, the place where my sorrows are at their most intense.”
The balance seems to come down on the side of “planning for disappointment.”
For Okey, this is especially manifest in traffic problems, roadblocks, bribes, trying to get ahead at all costs and regardless of others. And more deeply felt, in memories of Biafra and the civil war, the role of the British and the imposition of having to learn everything in English.
Ikey Anya writes about national anthems, protests and the national flag in A Banner Without Stain. The most painful memory for Ikey is the Asaba massacre. There is still so much to overcome, and there is still blood on the flag. Today, young people are rising up against the corrupt establishment, most prominently in the #EndSARS protests, a subject that Yomi Adegoke and Sefi Atta develop in their contributions.
In Pride and Punishment, Chigozie Obioma is the second writer to use the word ‘contraption’ to describe his artificially created country. Chigozie bewails the military coups and executions that have followed. One way to deal with this is self-deceit, believing in lies, hoping for better despite knowing the realities. Chigozie has hope and pride, but these feelings are continually being shaken. Still, as Abubakar told us, the writer has a role. Writers have opportunities and craft. Chigozie tells us:
“I saw that what I could do as a writer was to reveal to my readers not my opinion about society but my observations of it.”
This is positive and comes as some relief. But not for long. Chigozie adds that he feels punished by Nigeria for his pride, trust and hope. He wants to divorce himself from his country but cannot.
Bolu Babalola gives us Contradictions, focusing closely on her own sense of identity. Bolu defines herself as British, Black British, Black British Londoner, British Nigerian, ancestrally Nigerian, Yoruba, with African Caribbean links, in that specific order.
Conveying both simplicity and multiplicity, Bolu states: “We are a culture of cultures.”
This presents problems, including colourism. Bolu tells us:
“Nigeria has the highest amount of bleaching in the continent (WHO).”
The impacts of colonialism are many and last long, but if this can be acknowledged, she feels there is hope and potential for Nigeria.
For Nels Abbey, in Nulli Secundus, everything failed after the 1993 elections and the role of President Sami Abacha. Babangida and Buhari come in for similar criticism in other essays. Military leaders all.
“From there, everything collapsed and crumbled. Corruption…became normal.”
This is a surprisingly bold focus not on colonialism but on more recent, internal failure. Nels is one of the very few contributors who doesn’t directly blame the British and colonialism, but rather the Nigerian politicians for their own mistakes, without reference to the wrongdoings of outsiders.
Nels flags up problems with roads, electricity, crime, politics, the health sector and life expectancy, but his main issue is a bad education system. This, for him, explains why Nigerians are successful abroad, but not at home. A national tragedy. His conclusion is that Nigeria’s brilliance needs to be unleashed at home.
In #Representation Matters: The Oppressor in the Mirror, Yomi Adegoke brings us straight back to the impact of colonialism, with a twist. On identity…
British Nigerians, Yomi tells us, are sometimes unsure of ownership and culture, and on other days “doubly proud of who you are”. This means “Straddling two cultures”.
Yomi then focuses on class and classism, the wealth gap between rich and poor black people, and unfair education opportunities. The role of the police also comes under scrutiny. This links up to the class and wealth divide, and stems from history. The Nigerian police force was created in 1861 by British colonists. The modern day authorities emulate them in order to maintain corruption and protectionism, in favour of rich Nigerians. In response, the #EndSARS protests, spearheaded by the young, are vital. Sadly, with her final words, Yomi isn’t sure that Nigeria is ready to be “Corrupt free.”
Cheluchie Onyemelukwe presents Education as Saviour.
Being the first in your family to do something special, to be someone, is a big thing.
Cheluchie refers to the class divide, again, and the restrictions this places on opportunities for all. She bemoans the rise of private education in Nigerian. This is one of my own causes of sadness in the UK, where old Etonians have so many privileges and dominate the upper echelons of power and influence.
Cheluchie tells us what’s written on the gates of the law school at the University of Nigeria in Enugu:
“To restore the Dignity of Man”
I can see this might pose a problem for 49% of the population in Nigeria, but that’s missing the point. Education should be there to uplift people, not to divide or demean them. And then there is the age-old impact of the English language. We learn that Engli-Igbo children learn everything in English, and all about English history. Cheluchie sees this as
“Self-imposed re-colonisation”.
Finally, we come to Abi Dare, and You Are Not Going Back.
Abi covers so much. Good and bad. Like many, she has dual nationality and mixed feelings. Nigerians have a drive to succeed, but are prone to self-exaggeration. Nigerians have also suffered “Years of shattered expectations and broken promises.” But they still remain optimistic. The quest to define what it means to be Nigerian never ends.
Abi tells us that Nigerians are “a resiliently happy bunch”.
Humour is massively important. Abi knows a family with a baby who was named Degree by his grandmother, since the mother got pregnant at University.
But beware. Nigerians do not like outsiders criticising them. Who does? Abi maintains:
“the cord that ties us is thick and tight and reserved only for us”
I fear I have ignored this warning by offering my reflections on this anthology.
So what does Abi hope for?
A new Nigeria. The end of patriarchy. Fair distribution of wealth. Accountability.
This doesn’t seem too much to ask for. And Abi believes this is already happening at pace. There is “A wind of change becoming a tornado.”
In the meantime, Nigerians are simply seeking somewhere that they can genuinely call “home”.
Of This Our Country provides a wealth of fascinating personal reflections, stories, examples of cultural engagement and reasons for celebration, all set down for us by creative wonders. There is much joy and beauty conveyed throughout the collection. There is also great soul searching, and disturbing social commentary, by the very same writers. This inevitably goes beyond national boundaries and travels back and forth in time. There are some tough facts which cannot be ignored, both within and beyond Nigeria. Truth and justice must prevail. This is a challenging read, but a must-read. Perhaps for non-Nigerians even more than for Nigerians.
© Eddie Hewitt 2021