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 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.
school home writing
If the government doesn't fund education, which they often don't, students are going to stay home and not go to school. It affects them directly. But I'm really not interested in writing explicitly about that. I'm really interested in human beings, and in love, and in family. Somehow, politics comes in.
war writing profound
My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through.
beautiful ideas challenges
I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
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.
book writing people
I had people read it early on and, you know, well-meaning people said to me, you should take out the blogs. I didn't get much positive feedback. Only because most of these people were protective of me - it was sort of like a "tone it down, make it easier to swallow" kind of thing. And I just thought if I do that then it's not the book I want to write.
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.
girl father moving
I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.
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.