Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (; born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer, whose works include fiction, nonfiction, and lectures. She is widely recognised as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature.
Born into an Igbo family in Enugu, Nigeria, Adichie was educated at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where she studied medicine for a year and half. She left Nigeria at the age of 19 to study in the United States at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and went on to study at Eastern Connecticut State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University in the U.S.
Many of Adichie's novels are set in Nsukka, where she grew up. She started writing during her university education. She first wrote Decisions (1997), a poetry collection, followed by a play, For Love of Biafra (1998). She achieved early success with her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus. Adichie has written many works and has cited Chinua Achebe and Buchi Emecheta as inspirations. Her writing style juxtaposes Western and African influences, with particular influence from Igbo culture. Most of her works explore the themes of religion, immigration, gender and culture.
Adichie is a public speaker who has spoken at many commencement ceremonies, including at Williams College (2017), Harvard University (2018), and the American University (2019). She has also delivered Ted Talks, among them, "The Danger of a Single Story" (2009) and "We Should All Be Feminists" (2012). Part of the latter was featured by American singer Beyoncé in her song, as well as being featured on a T-shirt by Dior in 2016. Adichie's awards and honours include academic and literary prizes, fellowships, grants, honorary degrees, and other high recognition, such as a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008 and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.
Early life and initial stage career Adichie was born, with the English name Grace, on 15 September 1977 as the fifth out of six children. She was raised in Enugu, Nigeria, by parents of Igbo origin. Her father James Nwoye Adichie was from Abba in Anambra State while her mother and namesake Grace Odigwe was born in Umunnachi. Her father, who studied mathematics at University College, Ibadan, until his graduation in 1957, married Grace on 15 April 1963, and moved with her to Berkeley, California, to complete his PhD degree at the University of California. While in the United States, Adichie's parents had two daughters: ljeoma Rosemary and Uchenna. Her father returned to Nigeria and began working as a professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in 1966. Her mother began her university studies in 1964, at Merritt College in Oakland, California, and then later earned a degree in sociology and anthropology from the University of Nigeria.
The Biafran War broke out in 1967 and Adichie's father started working for the Biafran government at the Biafran Manpower Directorate. She lost her maternal and paternal grandfathers during the war. After Biafra ceased to exist in 1970, her father returned to the University of Nigeria, while her mother worked for the government at Enugu until 1973, before becoming an administration officer at the University of Nigeria, and later the first female registrar. Adichie stayed at the campus of the University of Nigeria, in a house previously occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Her siblings include Ijeoma Rosemary, Uchenna "Uche", Chukwunweike "Chuks", Okechukwu "Okey", and Kenechukwu "Kene".
As a child, Adichie read only English-language stories, especially by Enid Blyton. Adichie's juvenilia included stories with characters who were white and blue-eyed, modeled on British children she had read about. At the age of 10, she discovered African literature and read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, The African Child by Camara Laye, Weep Not, Child by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta. Adichie began to study her father's stories about Biafra when she was 13 years old. On visits to Abba, she saw houses that were destroyed and rusty bullets scattered on the ground. She would later incorporate these memories and her father's accounts into her novels.
At her Catholic confirmation, Adichie changed her English name from Grace to Amanda, under which name her first work was published. In her formal education, Adichie was taught in both Igbo and English. Although Igbo was not a popular subject, she continued taking courses in the language throughout high school. She completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria Campus Secondary School, with top distinction in the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), and academic prizes. She was admitted to the University of Nigeria, where she studied medicine and pharmacy for a year and half. She was also the editor of The Compass, a student-run university magazine. In 1997, at the age of 19, Adichie published Decisions, a collection of poems, and later moved to the United States, to study communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1998, she wrote a play called For Love of Biafra, which was her initial exploration of the theme of war. These early works were written under the name Amanda N. Adichie.
Two years after moving to the United States, she transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, Connecticut, living with her sister Ijeoma, who was a medical doctor there. In 2000, Adichie published her short story "My Mother, the Crazy African", which discusses the problems that arise when a person is facing two cultures that are complete opposites from each other. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she continued studying and simultaneously pursuing a writing career. While a senior at Eastern Connecticut, she wrote articles for the university paper Campus Lantern. She received her bachelor's degree summa cum laude with a major in political science and a minor in communications in 2001. She earned a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2003, and for the next two years was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University, where she taught introductory fiction. She began studying at Yale University, and completed a second master's degree in African studies in 2008. Adichie received a MacArthur Fellowship that same year, plus other academic prizes, including the 2011–2012 Fellowship of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
Career 2003: Literary debut and publication struggle While studying in the US, Adichie started researching and writing her first novel, Purple Hibiscus. She sent her manuscript to publishing houses and literary agents, who either rejected it or requested that she change the setting from Africa to America, so as to make it more familiar to a broader range of readers. Eventually, Djana Pearson Morris, a literary agent working at Pearson Morris and Belt Literary Management, accepted the manuscript. Although the agent recognized that marketing would be challenging, since Adichie was Black but neither African-American nor Caribbean, she submitted it to publishers until it was eventually accepted and published by Algonquin Books, a small independent company, in 2003. In 2004, Fourth Estate published the novel in the United Kingdom, while Kachifo Limited published it in Nigeria. During those time, Adichie hired literary agent Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency to represent her. Purple Hibiscus has been translated into more than forty languages.
2006–2012: publication of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck; public speaking success After her first novel, Adichie began writing her second one Half of a Yellow Sun, on which she worked for four years. Because the novel expands on the Biafran conflict during the Nigerian Civil War, Adichie employed her father's memories of the Biafran War, as well as reading books, including Buchi Emechetas 1982 novel Destination Biafra. The novel was first published in 2006 by Anchor Books, a trade-paperback imprint of Alfred A. Knopf, who also released the book later under its Vintage Canada label. It was published in France as in 2008, by Éditions Gallimard.
While completing her Hodder and MacArthur fellowships in 2008, Adichie started compiling short stories that she had already published in magazines. Twelve of the stories were collected in her third book and first short-story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, which was published by Knopf in 2009. In the same year, she delivered a TED Talk titled "The Danger of a Single Story".
On 15 March 2012, Adichie became the youngest person to deliver a Commonwealth Lecture. The presentation was given at the Guildhall in London, addressing the theme "Connecting Cultures". Also in 2012, she delivered a talk titled "We Should All Be Feminists" for TEDxEuston in London.
2013–2019: Americanah and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions success and feminism
Adichie's third novel Americanah was published on 14 May 2013 by Alfred A. Knopf. It was published in France by Éditions Gallimard in 2015. She was a visiting writer at the University of Michigan–Flint in 2014. The Renowned African Writers/African and African Diaspora Artists Visit Series required her to engage with students and teachers from high schools and universities, patrons of the local public library, and the community at large in forums, workshops, and lectures that discussed Purple Hibiscus, Americanah, and her personal writing experiences. Clips from her talks "The Danger of a Single Story" and "We Should All Be Feminists" were aired at some of the events and discussed in the question-and-answer segment following her varied presentations.
In 2015, Adichie delivered a commencement address for Wellesley College. She co-curated the 2015 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature in New York City, along with festival director Laszlo Jakab Orsos. She ended the festival with her "Arthur Miller Freedom to Write" lecture on censorship and opposition to injustices.
In 2015, Adichie wrote an email to a friend and later posted it on Facebook in 2016. Comments on the post convinced her to turn the post to a book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, which was published in 2017. In 2016, she was invited by the BBC to appear on Newsnight and give her thoughts on the 2016 election of Donald Trump. When she arrived at the studio, she was informed that the format would be a debate between her and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., a Trump supporter and the editor-in-chief of The American Spectator, a conservative magazine. Tempted to walk out of the interview, she decided to continue because she wanted to discuss her views on how economic disenfranchisement had led to Trump's victory. The debate turned adversarial when Tyrrell said: "I do not respond emotionally like this lady," and then declared that "Trump hasn't been a racist". Adichie countered his statements, as an example citing Trump's statement that Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel could not be impartial in the case Low v. Trump University because of his Mexican heritage. After the debate, she wrote on her Facebook page that she felt ambushed by the BBC and that they had "sneakily [pitted her] against a Trump supporter" to create adversarial entertainment. In response, the BBC issued an apology for not informing her of the nature of the interview, but claimed that they had designed the programme to offer a balanced perspective.