Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieis a Nigerian novelist, nonfiction writer and short story writer. A MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, Adichie has been called "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature"...
NationalityNigerian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth15 September 1977
CountryNigeria
beautiful ideas challenges
I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
beautiful war fighting
If I had not grown up in Nigeria- and if all I knew of Africa were of popular images- I too would think that africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals and incomprehensible people fighting sensless wars, dying of poverty and aids- unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.
beautiful acceptance hair
I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance , insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.
mean past rights
In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.
lying stranger easy
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.
poverty discovering american-poverty
One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty.
book writing thinking
Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.
school egypt president
In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.
racism cookies reducing
Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.
stories dependent
How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.
thinking rooms stills
And it's wrong of you to think that love leaves room for nothing else. It's possible to love something and still condescend to it.
I was stained by failure.
today problem gender
Yes, there's a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better.
where-we-come
Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.