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At About The Age Of Seven … I Wrote Exactly The Kinds Of Stories I Was Reading: All My Characters Were White And Blue-eyed, They Played In The Snow, They Ate Apples, And They Talked A Lot About The Weather: How Lovely It Was That The Sun Had Come Out. This Despite The Fact That I Lived In Nigeria; We Didn’t Have Snow, We Ate Mangoes, And We Never Talked About The Weather, Because There Was No Need To.

-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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At About The Age

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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At About The Age Of Seven … I Wrote Exactly The Kinds Of Stories I Was Reading: All My Characters Were White And Blue-eyed, They Played In The Snow, They Ate Apples, And They Talked A Lot About The Weather: How Lovely It Was That The Sun Had Come Out. This Despite The Fact That I Lived In Nigeria; We Didn’t Have Snow, We Ate Mangoes, And We Never Talked About The Weather, Because There Was No Need To.

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Each Time He Suggested They Get Married, She Said No. They Were Too Happy, Precariously So, And She Wanted To Guard That Bond; She Feared That Marriage Would Flatten It Into A Prosaic Partnership.

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They Themselves Mocked Africa, Trading Stories Of Absurdity, Of Stupidity, And They Felt Safe To Mock, Because It Was A Mockery Born Of Longing, And Of The Heartbroken Desire To See A Place Made Whole Again.

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This Is Our World, Although The People Who Drew This Map Decided To Put Their Own Land On Top Of Ours. There Is No Top Or Bottom, You See.

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Change For The Better

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You Americans, Always Peering Under People's Beds To Look For Communism.

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Race Doesn't Really Exist For You Because It Has Never Been A Barrier. Black Folks Don't Have That Choice.

White Privilege

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We Teach Girls Shame; Close Your Legs, Cover Yourself, We Make Them Feel As Though By Being Born Female They're Already Guilty Of Something.

Stories Matter. Many Stories Matter.

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Why Did People Ask "what Is It About?" As If A Novel Had To Be About Only One Thing.

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How Easy It Was To Lie To Strangers, To Create With Strangers The Versions Of Our Lives We Imagined.

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I Didn't Know I Was Even Supposed To Have Issues Until I Came To America

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White Privilege

When It Comes To Dressing Well, American Culture Is So Self-fulfilled That It Has Not Only Disregarded This Courtesy Of Self-presentation, But Has Turned That Disregard Into A Virtue. "we Are Too Superior/busy/cool/not-uptight To Bother About How We Look To Other People, And So We Can Wear Pajamas To School And Underwear To The Mall.

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Never Ever Accept 'because You Are A Woman' As A Reason For Doing Or Not Doing Anything.

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Racism Should Never Have Happened And So You Don't Get A Cookie For Reducing It.

The Best Novels Are Those That Are Important Without Being Like Medicine; They Have Something To Say, Are Expansive And Intelligent But Never Forget To Be Entertaining And To Have Character And Emotion At Their Centre.

Relaxing Your Hair Is Like Being In Prison. You're Caged In. Your Hair Rules You. You Didn't Go Running With Curt Today Because You Don't Want To Sweat Out This Straightness. You're Always Battling To Make Your Hair Do What It Wasn't Meant To Do.

Lasting Love Has To Be Built On Mutual Regard And Respect. It Is About Seeing The Other Person. I Am Very Interested In Relationships And, When I Watch Couples, Sometimes I Can Sense A Blindness Has Set In. They Have Stopped Seeing Each Other. It Is Not Easy To See Another Person.

For Centuries, The World Divided Human Beings Into Two Groups And Then Proceeded To Exclude And Oppress One Group. It Is Only Fair That The Solution To The Problem Acknowledge That.

We Teach Girls To Shrink Themselves, To Make Themselves Smaller. We Say To Girls: 'you Can Have Ambition, But Not Too Much. You Should Aim To Be Successful, But Not Too Successful. Otherwise, You Will Threaten The Man.' Because I Am Female, I Am Expected To Aspire To Marriage. I Am Expected To Make My Life Choices, Always Keeping In Mind That Marriage Is The Most Important. Now, Marriage Can Be A Source Of Joy And Love And Mutual Support, But Why Do We Teach Girls To Aspire To Marriage And We Don't Teach Boys The Same?

I Think You Travel To Search And You Come Back Home To Find Yourself There.

The Idea That Sex Is Something A Woman Gives A Man, And She Loses Something When She Does That, Which Again For Me Is Nonsense. I Want Us To Raise Girls Differently Where Boys And Girls Start To See Sexuality As Something That They Own, Rather Than Something That A Boy Takes From A Girl.

Then She Wished, More Rationally, That She Could Love Him Without Needing Him. Need Gave Him Power Without His Trying; Need Was The Choicelessness She Often Felt Around Him.

Show A People As One Thing, Only One Thing, Over And Over Again, And That Is What They Become.

Greatness Depends On Where You Are Coming From.

Stories Can Break The Dignity Of A People, But Stories Can Also Repair That Broken Dignity.

I Have Chosen To No Longer Be Apologetic For My Femaleness And My Femininity. And I Want To Be Respected In All Of My Femaleness Because I Deserve To Be.

I Often Make The Mistake Of Thinking That Something That Is Obvious To Me Is Obvious To Everyone Else.

One Of The Things That Struck Me When I Came To The U.s. Was Discovering American Poverty.

American Poverty

The Novels I Love, The Ones I Remember, The Ones I Re-read, Have An Empathetic Human Quality, Or 'emotional Truth'. This Quality Is Difficult To Fully Define, But I Always Recognise It When I See It: It Is Different From Honesty And More Resilient Than Fact, Something That Exists Not In The Kind Of Fiction That Explains But In The Kind That Shows.

He Was Making Her Feel Small And Absurdly Petulant And, Worse Yet, She Suspected He Was Right. She Always Suspected He Was Right. For A Brief Irrational Moment, She Wished She Could Walk Away From Him. Then She Wished, More Rationally, That She Could Love Him Without Needing Him. Need Gave Him Power Without His Trying; Need Was The Choicelessness She Often Felt Around Him.

Of Course I Am Not Worried About Intimidating Men. The Type Of Man Who Will Be Intimidated By Me Is Exactly The Type Of Man I Have No Interest In.

If You Start Thinking About Being Likable You Are Not Going To Tell Your Story Honestly.

Privilege Blinds, Because It's In Its Nature To Blind. Don't Let It Blind You Too Often. Sometimes You Will Need To Push It Aside In Order To See Clearly.

There Are Some Things That Are So Unforgivable That They Make Other Things Easily Forgivable.

About 52% Of The World's Population Is Female. But Most Of The Positions Of Power And Prestige Are Occupied By Men. The Late Kenyan Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai Put It Simply And Well When She Said 'the Higher You Go, The Fewer Women There Are.'

Position Of Power

I Am Interested In Challenging The Mainstream Ideas Of What Is Beautiful And What Is Acceptable.

We Do Not Just Risk Repeating History If We Sweep It Under The Carpet, We Also Risk Being Myopic About Our Present.

Dear Non-american Black, When You Make The Choice To Come To America, You Become Black. Stop Arguing. Stop Saying I'm Jamaican Or I'm Ghanaian. America Doesn't Care.

We Teach Girls That They Cannot Be Sexual Beings In The Way That Boys Are. If We Have Sons, We Don't Mind Knowing About Our Sons' Girlfriends, But Our Daughters' Boyfriends? God Forbid. But Of Course When The Time Is Right, We Expect Those Girls To Bring Back The Perfect Man To Be Their Husband.

There's Something Very Lazy About The Way You Have Loved Him Blindly For So Long Without Ever Criticizing Him. You've Never Even Accepted That The Man Is Ugly,' Kainene Said. There Was A Small Smile On Her Face And Then She Was Laughing, And Olanna Could Not Help But Laugh Too, Because It Was Not What She Had Wanted To Hear And Because Hearing It Had Made Her Feel Better.

Many Stories Matter. Stories Have Been Used To Dispossess And To Malign. But Stories Can Also Be Used To Empower, And To Humanize. Stories Can Break The Dignity Of A People. But Stories Can Also Repair That Broken Dignity.

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All Over The World, There Are So Many Magazine Articles And Books Telling Women What To Do, How To Be And Not To Be, In Order To Attract Or Please Men. There Are Far Fewer Guides For Men About Pleasing Women.

The Educated Ones Leave, The Ones With The Potential To Right The Wrongs. They Leave The Weak Behind. The Tyrants Continue To Reign Because The Weak Cannot Resist. Do You Not See That It Is A Cycle? Who Will Break That Cycle?

She Rested Her Head Against His And Felt, For The First Time, What She Would Often Feel With Him: A Self-affection. He Made Her Like Herself. With Him, She Was At Ease; Her Skin Felt As Though It Was Her Right Size.. It Seemed So Natural, To Talk To Him About Odd Things. She Had Never Done That Before. The Trust, So Sudden And Yet So Complete, And The Intimacy, Frightened Her.. But Now She Could Think Only Of All The Things She Yet Wanted To Tell Him, Wanted To Do With Him.

I Am A Person Who Believes In Asking Questions, In Not Conforming For The Sake Of Conforming. I Am Deeply Dissatisfied - About So Many Things, About Injustice, About The Way The World Works - And In Some Ways, My Dissatisfaction Drives My Storytelling.

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This Was Love: A String Of Coincidences That Gathered Significance And Became Miracles.

...he Did Not Want Me To Seek The Whys, Because There Are Some Things That Happen For Which We Can Formulate No Whys, For Which Whys Simply Do Not Exist And, Perhaps, Are Not Necessary.

She Could Not Complain About Not Having Shoes When The Person She Was Talking To Had No Legs.

She Rested Her Head Against His And Felt, For The First Time, What She Would Often Feel With Him: A Self-affection. He Made Her Like Herself.

Red Was The Blood Of The Siblings Massacred In The North, Black Was For Mourning Them, Green Was For The Prosperity Biafra Would Have, And, Finally, The Half Of A Yellow Sun Stood For The Glorious Future.

Americans Think African Writers Will Write About The Exotic, About Wildlife, Poverty, Maybe Aids. They Come To Africa And African Books With Certain Expectations.

To Choose To Write Is To Reject Silence.

There Has Always Been A Strange Dissonance Between The Public And The Private In Nigeria.

You Can't Write A Script In Your Mind And Then Force Yourself To Follow It. You Have To Let Yourself Be.

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.

I Have My Father's Lopsided Mouth. When I Smile, My Lips Slope To One Side. My Doctor Sister Calls It My Cerebral Palsy Mouth. I Am Very Much A Daddy's Girl, And Even Though I Would Rather My Smile Wasn't Crooked, There Is Something Moving For Me About Having A Mouth Exactly Like My Father's.

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.

My Grandfather Died In The War, My Family Went Through The War, And It Affected My Parents In Really Profound Ways. I've Always Wanted To Write About That Period - In Some Ways To Digest It For Myself, Something That Defined Me But That I Didn't Go Through.

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