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Chris Boland, 2013. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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Conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Nigerian writer talks with the journalist Anna Guitart

Debate

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the internationally renowned Nigerian writer, will speak about the key themes in her work, including the African diaspora, the question of race, feminism and the present-day situation in the United States.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that the story of power is always one single history which stereotypes and decides the destiny of others. Her literature therefore abounds with stories by means of which she has sought to open up cracks in the monolithic narrative constructed by the West about Africa.

Although Nigeria is the leitmotif of her work, she has progressively expanded her scope into other geographies in order to question additional elements which shape identity —race, for example— but that are not very relevant in the country of her birth. On leaving Nigeria when she was eighteen to go and to study at a university in the United States, she felt the shock of living in a society that obliged her to think of herself as black. This is the experience of the racism suffered by the main character in her most recent novel Americanah (Penguin Random House, 2014), the title of which is a colloquial adjective used in Nigeria to express scorn for people who move to the United States and then come back to Nigeria Americanised.

Adichie is also a leading figure in today’s feminist debate, where she has caused a stir with two brief essays, We Should All be Feminists (Penguin Random House, 2015) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (Penguin Random House, 2017).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will cover all these subjects in her conversation with Anna Guitart.

Presenters: Anna Guitart

Participants: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Talk with Anna Guitart

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the internationally best known Nigerian writers. In this conversation with culture journalist Anna Guitart, she speaks of key issues in her work such as the African diaspora, the issue of race, feminism and the political situation in the United States. Chimamanda ...

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