SAHARAN VIBE: CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria in 1977. She is from Abba, in Anambra State, but grew up in the university town of Nsukka where she attended primary and secondary schools and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale.

She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and she has recently published a collection of short stories titled The Thing around Your Neck (2009). She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (2007) and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2008).

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Purple Hibiscus won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and long-listed for the Booker Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, Prospect, and The Iowa Review among other literary journals, and she received an O. Henry Prize in 2003. She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught Introductory Fiction. She divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of five people’s lives ranging from high ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria and stopped ruling, conflicts arose over what government would rule over the land. The land split and the Nigeria-Biafra war started. The lives of the main characters (two sisters Olanna and Kainene) drastically changed and were torn apart by the war and decisions in their personal life.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story at TED Talks

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

"And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." "The consequence of the single story is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar."

"Of course, Africa is a continent full of catastrophes. There are immense ones, such as the horrific rapes in Congo. And depressing ones, such as the fact that 5,000 people apply for one job vacancy in Nigeria. But there are other stories that are not about catastrophe. And it is very important, it is just as important, to talk about them."