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
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.
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.
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.
world way different
There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.
risk myopic carpet
We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.