The Power of Storytelling

Chimamanda Adiche was born on the 15th September, 1977 in Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria. She is a novelist, short-story and nonfiction writer, who has been declared by The Times Literary Supplement as the most prominent of the many critically acclaimed anglophone authors, attracting a new generation of readers to African culture.

Her Pen name is Amanda N. Adichie, and her repertoire includes, the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a yellow sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Her most recent books are Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017), Zikora (2020) and Notes on Grief (2021)

In 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant. She was the recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize in 2018.

I chanced upon the name Chimamanda while researching for another article and was immediately struck by her story. Her's is not a Cinderella story, she was born into privilege according to the dictates of privilege in Nigeria. Yet, in listening to her speak, I derived pleasure and a sense of humility and heart within the words that she spoke. I wanted to hear many more of her speeches and read all of her books, essays and short stories.

It was really refreshing to see and hear someone actually delivering her message as she lived it, and wished us to live it. Her speech held a relevance that we can all take to heart and incorporate into our daily lives and our own reading and writing.

Her book, Half of a yellow sun, published by 4th Estate in London, tells the story of the Biafran war through the perspective of her characters. It won the Women's prize for fiction in 2007, and was adapted into a movie, starring Chitwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton and Joseph Mawle among others, and was released in September 2013.

The Nigerian Civil War (6 July 1967 – 15 January 1970) also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War or the Biafran War) was a civil war fought between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state which had declared its independence from Nigeria in 1967.

Adichie was born to a father who was a professor at the University of Nigeria, and a mother who was the first female registrar at the university. She was the fifth of six children, and they resided on the campus of the university. They lost almost everything during the Nigerian civil war, including her maternal and paternal grandfathers.

From an early age she began to receive academic awards and went on to begin the study of medicine, before deciding that it was not her dream. At age 19 she left Nigeria to live and study in the United States.

She studied communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) to be near her sister Uche, who had a medical practice in Coventry, Connecticut. She received a bachelor's degree from ECSU, summa cum laude, in 2001.

In 2003, Adichie completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University. Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005–2006 academic year. In 2008, she received a Master of Arts degree in African studies from Yale University. Also in 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She was awarded a 2011–2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Adichie holds sixteen honorary doctorate degrees from some of the world's best universities, including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Catholic University of Louvain, where she got her sixteenth on 28 April 2022.(Wiki)

She discusses the culture shock of adjusting from one culture to another, which can only be understood by actually experiencing the deep feelings of confusion by those acclimatizing to life in a different culture, custom or tradition.

Her inspiration she says, comes from, the writer Chinu Achebe, among others, after reading his 1958 novel Things fall apart, at the age of ten. Coincidentally, she lived in the house that he lived in on the Nigerian university's campus while her family resided there.

The danger of a single story

Adichie published a collection of poems in 1997 (Decisions) and a play (For Love of Biafra) in 1998, using the name Amanda N. Adichie. Her short story "My Mother, the Crazy African", dating from when Adichie was a college senior living in Connecticut, discusses the problems that arise when a person is facing two cultures that are complete opposites from each other. On one hand, there is a traditional Nigerian culture with clear gender roles, while in America there is more freedom in how genders act, and less restrictions on younger people. Ralindu, the protagonist, faces this challenge with her parents as she grew up in Philadelphia. Adichie dives deep into gender roles and traditions and what problems can occur because of this.(Wiki)

We should all be feminists

This charismatic wife, mother, intelligent and eloquent writer, novelist and poet is well deserving of our time spent listening to her speeches and reading her literary works.

Her views on Religion, feminism, LBGT rights and her extremely impressive and innumerable awards can be read further on Wikipedia.

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