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
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.
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.
thinking identity problem
I have many problems in my life, but I don't think that identity is one of them.
home thinking back-home
I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.
writing mean thinking
I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.
thinking stories honestly
If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly.
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.
character intelligent medicine
The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.
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.
columbia maryland divides
I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.
beautiful ideas challenges
I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.
reality poverty culture
I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.