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
stories matter
Stories matter. Many stories matter.
real writing stories
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
details fiction stories
I am drawn, as a reader, to detail-drenched stories about human lives affected as much by the internal as by the external, the kind of fiction that Jane Smiley nicely describes as 'first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don't fit, into their social worlds.'
stories dependent
How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.
broken people stories
Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”
stories ability persons
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.
paradise stories kind
When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
stories brilliant problem
The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.
thinking stories honestly
If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly.
america entirely moved novels processes stories
Each of my novels has come from a different place, and the processes are not always entirely conscious. I have lived off and on in America for a number of years and so have accumulated observations, found things interesting, been moved to tell stories about them.
consider nigerian sort spends time
I sort of consider myself a Nigerian who spends a lot of time in the U.S.
considered discovered exotic games mysteries played simply treasures understand
I would come, many years later, to understand why 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is considered 'an important novel', but when I first read it at 11, I was simply absorbed by the way it evoked the mysteries of childhood, of treasures discovered in trees, and games played with an exotic summer friend.
african came expected matter realized subject turned united whenever whether
I realized that I was African when I came to the United States. Whenever Africa came up in my college classes, everyone turned to me. It didn't matter whether the subject was Namibia or Egypt; I was expected to know, to explain.
buy largely military money nigerian politics pump rather since
Nigerian politics has been, since the military dictatorships, largely non-ideological. Rather than a battle of ideas, it is about who can pump in the most money and buy the most access.